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■ E S SAY S 

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CONTENTS. 



WRITTEN IN THE INTERVALS OF BUSINESS. 
The First Part. 



PACK 



On Practical Wisdom 7 

Aids to Contentment 12 

On Self-Discipline 20 

On our Judgments of Other Men 26 

On the Exercise of Benevolence 35 

Domestic Rule 42 

Advice 51 

Secrecy ry 

The Second Part. 

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iv CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

On the Treatment of Suitors 86 

Interviews 90 

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Bodies of Men called together to Counsel 

OR TO Direct 9S 

Party-Spirit 105 



ON ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 

Introduction 115 

On Organization in Daily Life 119 

Conversation in a Railway Carriage .... 193 



ESSAYS 

WRITTEN IN THE INTERVALS OF BUSINESS. 

THE FIRST PART. 



" And he that knows how little certainty there is in human discourses, and 
how we know in part, and prophesie in part, and that of every thing whereof 
we know a little we are ignorant in much more, must either be content with 
such proportion as the things will bear, or as himself can get, or else he must 
never seek to alter or to persuade any man to be of his opinion. For the 
greatest part of discourses that are in the whole world is nothing but a heap 
of probable inducements, plausibilities, and witty entertainments ; and the 
throng of notices is not unlike the accidents of a battel, in which every man 
tells a new tale, something that he saw, mingled with a great many things 
which he saw not ; his eyes and his fear joyning together equally in the 
instructions and the illusion, these make up the stories." 

Jeremy Taylor's Dudor Duhitantiunt. 



PART I. 



ON PRACTICAL WISDOM. 

"r)RACTICAL wisdom acts in the mind as gravi- 
tation does in the material world : combining, 
keeping things in their places, and maintaining a 
mutual dependence amongst the various parts of our 
system. It is for ever reminding us where we are, 
and what we can do, not in fancy, but in real life. 
It does not permit us to wait for dainty duties, pleas- 
ant to the imagination, but insists upon our doing 
those which are before us. It is always inclined to 
make much of what it possesses ; and is not given 
to ponder over those schemes which might have 
been carried on, if what is irrevocable had been 
other than it is. It does not suffer us to waste our 
energies in regret. In journeying with it we go 
towards the sun, and the shadow of our burden 
falls behind us. 



8 ESSAYS. 

In bringing any thing to completion, the means 
which it looks for are not the shortest, nor the 
neatest, nor the best that can be imagined. They 
have, however, this advantage, that they happen 
to be within reach. 

We are liable to make constant mistakes about 
the nature of practical wisdom, until we come to 
perceive that it consists not in any one predominant 
faculty or disposition, but rather in a certain har- 
mony amongst all the faculties and affections of the 
man. Where this harmony exists, there are likely 
to be well-chosen ends, and means judiciously 
adapted. But, as it is, we see numerous instances 
of men who, with great abilities, accomplish noth- 
ing, and we are apt to vary our views of practical 
wisdom according to the particular failings of these 
men. Sometimes we think it consists in having a 
definite purpose, and being constant to it. But 
take the case of a deeply selfish person : he will be 
constant enough to his purpose, and it will be a 
definite one. Very likely, too, it may not be found- 
ed upon unreasonable expectations. The object 
which he has in view may be a small thing ; but 
being as close to his eyes as to his heart; there will 
be times when he can see nothing, above it or 



ON PRACTICAL WISDOM. n 

beyond it, or beside it. And so he may fail in 
practical wisdom. 

Sometimes it is supposed that practical wisdom 
is not likely to be found amongst imaginative per- 
sons. And this is very ti'ue, if you mean by " im- 
aginative persons " those who have an excess of 
imagination. For in the mind, as in the body, 
general dwarfishness is often accompanied by a 
disproportionate size of some part. The large 
hands and feet of a dwarf seem to have devoured 
his stature. But if you mean tliat imagination, of 
itself, is something inconsistent with practical wis- 
dom, I think you will find that your opinion is not 
founded on experience. On the contrary, I believe 
that there have been few men who have done great 
things in the world who have not had a large power 
of imagination. For imagination, if it be subject 
to reason, is its " slave of the lamp." 

It is a common error to suppose that practical 
wisdom is something Epicurean in its nature, which 
makes no difficulties, takes things as they come, is 
desirous of getting rid rather than of completing, 
and which, in short, is never troublesome. And 
from a fancy of this kind, many persons are con- 
sidered speculative merely because they are of a 
. searching nature ; and are not satisfied with small 



lO 



ESSAYS. 



expedients, and such devices as serve to conceal 
the ills they cannot cure. And if to be practical is 
to do things in such a w^ay as to leave a great deal 
for other people to undo at some future, and no 
very distant period, — then, certainly, these scrutin- 
izing, pains-taking sort of persons are not practical. 
For it is their nature to prefer a good open visible 
rent to a time-serving patch. I do not mean to say 
that they may not resort to patching as a means of 
delay. But they w^ill not permit themselves to 
fancy that they have done a thing, w^hen they have 
only hit upon some expedient for putting off the 
doing. 

Bacon says, " In this theatre of man's life, God 
and angels only should be lookers-on ; that contem- 
plation and action ought ever to be united, a con- 
junction like unto that of the two highest planets, 
Saturn the planet of rest, and Jupiter the planet of 
action." It is in this conjunction, which seems to 
Bacon so desirable, that practical wisdom delights ; 
and on that account it is supposed by some men to 
have a tinge of baseness in it. They do not know 
that practical wisdom is as far from what they 
term expediency, as it is from impracticability itself. 
They see how much of compromise there is in all 



ON PRACTICAL WISDOM. n 

human affairs. At the same time, they do not per- 
ceive that this compromise, which should be the 
nice Hmit between wilfulness and a desertion of the 
light that is within us, is the thing of all others 
which requires the diligent exercise of that upright- 
ness which they fear to put in peril, and wMch, 
they persuade themselves, will be strengthened by 
inactivity. They fancy, too, that high moral re- 
solves and great principles are not for daily use, and 
that there is no room for them in the affairs of this 
life. This is an extreme delusion. For how is the 
world ever made better? Not by mean little 
schemes which some men fondly call practical, not 
by setting one evil thing to counteract another, but 
by the introduction of those principles of action 
which are looked upon at first as theories, but which 
are at last acknowledged and acted upon as common 
truths. The men who first introduce these prin- 
ciples are practical men, though the practices which 
such principles create may not come into being in 
the lifetime of their founders. 



% 



12 ESSAYS. 



AIDS TO CONTENTMENT. 

'THHE first object of this Essay is to suggest some 
antidotes against the manifold ingenuity of 
selftormenting. 

For instance, how much fretting might be pre- 
vented by a thorough conviction that there can be 
no such thing as unmixed good in this world ! In 
ignorance of this, how many a man, after having 
made a free choice in any matter, contrives to find 
innumerable causes for blaming his judgment! 
Blue and green having been the only colors put 
before him, he is dissatisfied with himself because 
he omitted to choose pure white. Shenstone has 
worked out the whole process. with fidelity. " We 
are oftentimes in suspense betwixt the choice of 
different pursuits. We choose one at last doubting- 
ly, and with an unconquered hankering after the 
other. We find the scheme which we have chosen 
answer our expectations but indifferently, — most 
worldly projects will. -We therefore repent of our 
choice, and immediately fancy happiness in the 
paths which we decline ; and this heightens our 
uneasiness. We might at least escape the aggrava- 
tion of it. It is not improbable we had been more 



AIDS TO CONTENTMENT. j^ 

unhappy, but extremely probable we had not been 
less so, had we made a different decision." 



A great deal of discomfort arises from over-sensi- 
tiveness about what people may say of you or your 
actions. This requires to be blunted. Consider 
whether any thing that you can do will have much 
connection with what they will say. And, besides, 
it may be doubted whether they will say any thing at 
all about you. Many unhappy persons seem to 
imagine that they are always in an amphitheatre, 
with the assembled world as spectators ; whereas, 
all the while, they are playing to empty benches. 
They fancy, too, that they form the particular 
theme of every passer-by. If, however, they must 
listen to imaginary conversations about themselves, 
they might, at any rate, defy the proverb, and insist 
upon hearing themselves well spoken of. 

Well, but suppose that it is no fancy ; and that 
you really are the object of unmerited obloqu3\ 
What then? It has been well said, that in that 
case the abuse does not touch you ; that if you are 
guiltless, it ought not to hurt your feelings any more 
than if it were said of another person, with whom 
you are not even acquainted. You may answer 
that this false description of you is often believed 



J. ESSAYS. 

in by those whose good opinion is of importance to 
your welfare. That certainly is a palpable injury ; 
and the best mode of bearing up against it is to 
endeavor to form some just estimate of its nature 
and extent. Measure it by the worldly harm which 
is done to you. Do not let your imagination con- 
jure up all manner of apparitions of scorn, and 
contempt, and universal hissing. It is partly your 
own fault if the calumny is believed in by those 
who ought to know you, and in whose affections 
you live. That should be a circle within which no 
poisoned dart can reach you. And for the rest, for 
the injury done you in the world's estimation, it 
is simply a piece of ill-fortune, about which it 
is neither wise nor decorous to make much 
moaning. 

A little thought will sometimes prevent you from 
being discontented at not meeting with the gratitude 
which you have expected. If you were only to 
measure your expectations of gratitude by the extent 
of benevolence which you have expended, you 
would seldom have occasion to call people ungrate- 
ful. But many persons are in the habit of giving 
such a factitious value to any services which they 
may render, that there is but little chance of their 
being contented with what they are likely to get in 



AIDS TO CONTENTMENT. 



15 



return ; which, however, may be quite as much as 
they deserve. 

Besides, it is a common thing for people to ex- 
pect from gratitude what affection alone can give. 

There are many topics which may console you 
when you are displeased at not being as much 
esteemed as you think you ought to be. You may 
begin by observing that people in general will not 
look about for anybody's merits, or admire any thing 
which does not come in their way. You may con- 
sider how satirical would be any praise which 
should not be based upon a just appreciation of your 
merits ; you may reflect how few of your fellow- 
creatures can have the opportunity of forming a 
just judgment about you ; you may then go further, 
and think how few of those few are persons whose 
judgment would influence you deeply in other 
matters ; and you may conclude by imagining 
that such persons do estimate you fairly, though 
perhaps you never hear it. 

The heart of man seeks for sympathy, and each 
of us craves a recognition of his talents and his 
labors. But this craving is in danger of becoming 
morbid, unless it be constantly kept in check by 
calm reflection on its vanity, or by dwelling upon the 



1 5 ESSAYS. 

very different and far higher motives which should 
actuate us. That man has fallen into a pitiable 
state of moral sickness, in whose eyes the good 
opinion of his fellow-men is the test of merit, and 
their applause the principal reward for exertion. 

A habit of mistrust is the torment of some people. 
It taints their love and their friendship. They take 
up small causes of offence. They expect their friends 
to show the same aspect to them at all times ; which 
is more than human nature can do. They try ex- 
periments to ascertai i whether they are sufficiently 
loved ; they watch* n irrowly the effects of absence, 
and require their frie nds to prove to them that the 
intimacy is exactly u pon the same footing as it was 
before. Some perso is acquire these suspicious ways 
from a natural diffidence in themselves, for which 
they are often loved the more ; and they might find 
ample comfort in that, if they could but believe it. 
With others, these habits arise from a selfishness 
which cannot be satisfied. And their endeavors 
should be to uproot such a disposition, not to 
soothe it. 

Contentment abides with truth. And you will 
generally suffer for wishing to appear other than 



AIDS TO CONTENTMENT. 1 7 

what you are ; whether it be richer or greater or 
more learned. The mask soon becomes an instru- 
ment of torture. 

f Fit objects to employ the intervals of life are 
among the greatest aids to contentment that a man 
can possess. The lives of many pei:sons are an 
alternation of the one engrossing pursuit, and a sort 
of listless apathy. They are either grinding, or do- 
ing nothing. Now to those who are half their lives 
fiercely busy, the remaining half is often torpid with- 
out quiescence. A man should have some pursuits 
which may be always in his power, and to which 
he may turn gladly in his hours of recreation. 

And if the intellect requires thus to be provided 
with perpetual objects, what must it be with the 
affections ? Depend upon it, the most fatal idleness 
is that of the heart. And the man who feels weary 
of life may be sure that he does not love his fellow- 
creatures as he ought. 

You cannot hope for any thing like contentment 
so long as you continue to attach that ridiculous de- 
gree of importance to the events of this life which so 
many people are inclined to do. Observe the effect 
which it has upon them : they are most uncomfort- 



1 3 ESSAYS. 

able if their little projects do not turn out according 
to their fancy — nothing is to be angular to them ; 
they regard external things as the only realities ; and 
as they have fixed their abode here, they must have 
it arranged to their mind. In all they undertake, 
they feel the anxiety of a gambler, and not the calm- 
ness of a laboring man. It is, however, the suc- 
cess or failure of their efforts, and not the motives 
for their endeavor, which gives them this concern. 
" It will be all the same a hundred years hence." 
So says the Epicurean as he saunters by. The 
Christian exhorts them to extend their hopes and 
their fears to the far future. But they are up to their 
lips in the present, though they taste it none the 
more for that. And so they go on, fretting and 
planning and contending ; until an event, about 
which of all their anxieties they have felt the least 
anxious, sweeps them and their cobwebs away from 
the face of the earth. 

I have no intention of putting forward specifics 
for real aflS^ictions, or pretending to teach refined 
methods for avoiding grief. As long, however, 
as there is any thing to be done in a matter, the 
time for grieving about it has not come. But when 
the subject for grief is fixed and inevitable, sorrow 



AIDS TO CONTENTMENT. i^ 

is to be borne like pain. It is only a paroxysm of 
either that can justify us in neglecting the duties 
which no bereavement can lessen, and which no 
sorrow can leave us without. And we may re- 
member that sorrow is at once the lot, the trial, 
and the privilege of man. 

Most of the aids to contentment above suggested 
are, comparatively, superficial ones ; and, though 
they may be serviceable, there is much in human 
nature that they cannot touch. Even Pagans were 
wont to look for more potent remedies. They could 
not help seeking for some great idea to rest upon ; 
something to still the throbbings of their souls ; 
some primeval mystery which should be answerable 
for the miseries of life. Such was their idea of 
Necessity, the source of such systems as the Stoic 
and the Epicurean. Christianity rests upon very 
different foundations. And surely a Christian's 
reliance on divine goodness, and his full belief in 
another world, should console him under serious 
affliction, and bear the severer test of supporting 
him against that under-current of vexations which 
is not wanting in the smoothest life. 



20 ESS A TS. 



ON SELF-DISCIPLINE. 

'T^HERE Is always some danger of self-discipline 
leading to a state of self-confidence ; and the 
more so, when the motives for it are of a poor and 
worldly character, or the results of it outward only, 
and superficial. But surely when a man has got the 
better of any bad habit or evil disposition, his sensa- 
tions should not be those of exultation only : ought 
they not rather to be akin to the shuddering faintness 
with which he would survey a chasm that he had 
been guided to avoid, or with which he would recall 
to mind a dubious deadly struggle which had termi- 
nated in his favor ? The sense of danger is never, 
perhaps, so fully apprehended as when the danger 
has been overcome. 

Self-discipline is grounded on self-knowledge. A 
man may be led to resolve upon some general 
course of self-discipline by a faint glimpse of his 
moral degradation : let him not be contented with 
that small insight. His first step in self-discipline 
should be to attempt to have something like an 
adequate idea of the extent of the disorder. The 
deeper he goes in this matter the better : he must 



ON SELF-DISCIPLINE. 21 

try to probe his own nature thoroughly. Men 
often make use of what self-knowledge they may 
possess to frame for themselves skilful flattery, or to 
amuse themselves in fancying what such persons as 
they are would do under various imaginary circum- 
stances. For flatteries and for fancies of this kind, 
not much depth of self-knowledge is required ; but 
he who wants to understand his own nature for the 
purposes of self-discipline, must strive to learn the 
whole truth about himself, and not shrink from tell- 
ing it to his own soul : — 

*'To thine own self be true> 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 

The old courtier Polonius meant this for world- 
ly wisdom ; but it may be construed much more 
deeply. 

Imagine the soul, then, thoroughly awake to its 
state of danger, and the whole energies of the man 
devoted to self-improvement. At this point, there 
often arises a habit of introspection which is too 
limited in its nature : we scrutinize each action as 
if it were a thing by itself, independent and self- 
originating; and so our scrutiny does less good, 



22 JESSA YS. 

perhaps, than might be expected from the pain it 
gives and the resolution it requires. Any truthful 
examination into our actions must be good ; but we 
ought not to be satisfied with it, until it becomes 
both searching and progressive. Its aim should be 
not only to investigate instances, but to discover 
principles. Thus, — suppwDse that our ^conscience 
upbraids us for any particular bad habit : we then 
regard each instance of it with intense self-reproach, 
and long for an opportunity of proving the amend- 
ment which seems certain to arise from our pangs 
of regret. The trial comes ; and sometimes our 
former remorse is remembered, and saves us ; and 
sometimes it is forgotten, and our conduct is as bad 
as it was before our conscience was awakened. 
Now in such a case we should begin at the begin- 
ning, and strive to discover where it is that we are 
wrong in the heart. This is not to be done by 
weighing each particular instance, and observing 
after what interval it occurred, and whether with a 
little more, or a little less, temptation than usual : 
instead of dwelling chiefly on mere circumstances 
of this kind, we should try and get at the sub- 
stance of the thing, so as to ascertain what funda- 
mental precept of God is violated by the habit 
in question. That precept we should make our 



ON SELF-DISCIPLIN'E. 23 

study ; and then there is more hope of a permanent 
amendment. 



Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away 
a mist ; but, by ascending a little, you may often 
look over it altogether. So it is with our moral 
improvement : we wrestle fiercely with a vicious 
habit, which would have no hold upon us if we 
ascended into a higher moral atmosphere 

As I have heard suggested, it is by adding to our 
good purposes, and nourishing the affections which 
are rightly placed, that we shall best be able to 
combat the bad ones. By adopting such a course 
you will not have yielded to your enemy, but will 
have gone, in all humility, to form new alliances : 
you will then resist an evil habit with the strength 
which you have gained in carrying out a good one. 
You will find, too, that when you set your heart 
upon the things that are worthy of it, the small 
selfish ends, which used to be so dear to it, will 
appear almost disgusting: you will wonder that 
they could have had such hold upon you. 

In the same way, if you extend and deepen your 
sympathies, the prejudices which have hitherto 
clung obstinately to you will fall away, your former 



H 



£88 A YS. 



uncharitableness will seem absolutely distasteful : 
you will have brought home to it feelings and 
opinions with which it cannot live. 

Man, a creature of twofold nature, body and soul, 
should have both parts of that nature engaged in 
any matter in which he is concerned : spirit and 
form must both enter into it. It is idol-worship to 
substitute the form for the spirit ; but it is a vam 
philosophy which seeks to dispense with the form 
All this applies to self-discipline. 

See how most persons love to connect some out- 
ward circumstance with their good resolutions: 
they resolve on commencing the new year with a 
surrender of this bad habit: they will alter their 
conduct as soon as they are at such a place. The 
mind thus shows its feebleness ; but we must not 
conclude that the support it naturally seeks is use- 
less. At the same time that we are to turn our 
chief attention to the attainment of right principles, 
we cannot safely neglect any assistance which may 
strengthen us in contending against bad habits : far 
is it from the spirit of true humility to look down 
upon such assistance. Who would not be glad to 
have the ring of Eastern story, which should 
remind the wearer by its change of color of his 



ON SELF-DISCIPLINE. 



25 



want of shame ? Still these auxiliaries partake of 
a mechanical nature : we must not expect more 
from them than they can give : they may serve as 
aids to memory ; they may form landmarks, as it 
were, of our progress ;• but they cannot, of them- 
selves, maintain that progress. 

It is in a similar spirit that we should treat what 
may be called prudential considerations. We may 
listen to the suggestions of prudence, and find them 
an aid to self-discipline ; but we should never rest 
upon them. While we do not fail to make the due 
use of them, we must never forget that they do not 
go to the root of the matter. Prudence may enable 
a man to conquer the world,*but not to rule his own 
heart : it may change one evil passion for another ; 
but it is not a thing of potency enough to make a 
man change his nature. 

Prayer is a constant source of invigoration to self- 
discipline: not the thoughtless praying, which is a 
thing of custom ; but that which is sincere, intense, 
watchful. Let a man ask himself whether he reall}'' 
would have the thing he prays for : let him think, 
while he is praying for a spirit of forgiveness, 
whether even at that moment he is disposed to give 
up the luxury of anger. If not, what a horrible 



25 ESSAYS. 

mockery it is ! To think that a man can find noth- 
ing better to do, in the presence of his Creator, 
than telling off so many words: alone with his 
God, and repeating his task like a child ; longing 
to get rid of it, and indifferent to its meaning ! 



3><«C 



ON OUR JUDGMENTS OF OTHER MEN. 

TN forming these lightly, we wrong ourselves, 
and those whom we judge. In scattering such 
things abroad, we endow our unjust thoughts with 
a life which we cannot take away, and become 
false witnesses to pervert the judgments of the 
world in general. Who does not feel that to 
describe with fidelity the least portion of the en- 
tangled nature that is within him would be no easy 
matter.? And yet the same man who feels this, and 
who, perhaps, would be ashamed of talking at 
hazard about the properties of a flower, of a weed, 
of some figure in geometry, will put forth his 
guesses about the character of his brother-man, as 
if he had the fullest authority for all that he was 
saying. 



ON OUR JUDGMENTS OF OTHER MEN. 2*1 

But perhaps we are not wont to make such rash 
remarks ourselves : we are only pleased to receive 
them with the most obliging credence from the lips 
of any person we may chance to meet with. Such 
credulity is any thing but blameless. We cannot 
think too seriously of the danger of taking upon 
trust these off-hand sayings, and of the positive 
guilt of uttering them as if they were our own, or 
had been assayed by our observation. How much 
we should be ashamed if we knew the slight 
grounds of some of those uncharitable judgments 
to which we lend the influence of our name by 
repeating them! And even if we repeat such 
things only as we have good reason to believe in, 
we should still be in no hurry to put them forward, 
especially if they are sentences of condemnation. 

There is a maxim of this kind which Thomas ^ 
Kempis, in his chapter " de prudentia in agendis," 
has given with all the force of expression that it 
merits. " Ad banc etiam pertinet, non quibuslibet 
hominum verbis credere ; nee audita vel credita^ 
mox ad aliorum aures effunderey 

There are certain things quite upon the surface 
of a man's character: there are certain obvious 
facts in any man's conduct ; and there are persons 
who, being very^ much before the world, offer 



28 ESSAYS. 

plenty of materials for judging about them. Such 
circumstances as these may fairly induce you to 
place credence in a general opinion, which, how- 
ever, you have no means of verifying in any way 
for yourself; but in no case should you suffer your- 
self to be carried away at olice by the current 
sayings about men's characters and conduct. If 
you do, you are helping to form a mob. Consider 
what these sayings are : how seldom they embody 
the character discussed ; or go far to exhaust the 
question, if it is one of conduct. It is well if they 
describe a part with faithfulness, or give indications 
from which a shrewd and impartial thinker may 
deduce some true conclusions. Again, these say- 
ings may be true in themselves, but the prominence 
given to them may lead to very false impressions. 
Besides, how many of them must be formed upon 
the opinion of a few persons, and those, perhaps, 
forward thinkers. 

You feel that you yourself would be liable to 
make mistakes of all kinds if you had to form an 
independent judgment in the matter : do not too 
readily suppose that the general opinions you hear 
are free from such mistakes merely because they 
are made, or appear to you to be made, by a great 
many people. 



ON OUR JUDGMENTS OF OTHER MEN. 29 

If we come to analyze the various opinions we 
hear of men's character and conduct, there must be 
many which are formed wrongly, though sincerely, 
either from imperfect information or erroneous 
reasoning. There will be others which are the 
simple result of the prejudices and passions of the 
persons judging, of their humors, and sometimes 
even of their ingenuity. There will be others 
grounded on total misrepresentations which arise 
from imperfect hearing, or from some entire mis 
take, or from a report being made by a person who 
understood so little of the matter that it was not 
possible for him to convey, with any thing like 
accuracy, what he heard about it. Then there 
are the careless things which are said in general 
conversation, but which often have as much appar- 
ent weight as if they had been well considered. 
Sometimes these various causes are combined ; and 
the result is, that an opinion of some man's char- 
acter and conduct gets abroad which is formed 
after a wrong method, by prejudiced persons, upon 
a false statement of facts, respecting a matter 
which they cannot possibly understand ; and this 
is then left to be inflated by Folly, and blown about 
by Idleness. 

There is an excellent passage in Wollaston*s 



20 ESSAYS. 

Religion of Nature upon this subject, where he 
says, " The good or bad repute of men depends in 
a great measure upon mean people, who carry their 
stories from family to family, and propagate them 
■very fast : like little insects, which lay apace, and 
the less the faster. There are few, very few, who 
have the opportunity and the will and the ability 
to represent tilings truly. Beside the matters 
of fact themselves, there are many circumstances 
which, before sentence is passed, ought to be 
known and weighed, and yet scarce ever can be 
known but to the person himself who is concerned. 
He may have other views, and another sense of 
things, than his judges have ; and what he under- 
stands, what he feels, what he intends, may be a 
secret confined to his own breast. Or perhaps the 
censurer, notwithstanding this kind of men talk as 
if they were infallible, may be mistaken himself in 
his opinion, and judge that to be wrong which in 
truth is right." 

Few people have imagination enough to enter 
into the delusions of others, or indeed to look at the 
actions of any other person with any prejudices but 
their own. Perhaps, however, it would be nearer 
the truth to say that few people are in the habit 
of employing their imagination in the service of 



ON OUR JUDGMENTS OF OTHER MEN. ^j 

charity. Most persons require its magic aid to 
gild their castles in the air ; to conduct them along 
those fancied triumphal processions in which they 
themselves play so conspicuous a part ; to conquer 
enemies for them without battles ; and to make "^ 
them virtuous without effort. This is what \hey 
want their imagination for: they cannot spare it 
for any little errand of charity. And sometimes 
when men do think charitably, they are afraid to 
speak out, for fear of being considered stupid or 
credulous. 

We have been considering the danger of adopt- 
ing current sayings about men's character and con- 
duct ; but suppose we consider, in detail, the 
difficulty of forming an original opinion on these 
matters, especially if we have not a personal knowl- 
edge of the men of whom we speak. In the first 
place, we seldom know with sufficient exactness 
the facts upon which w^e judge ; and a little thing 
may make a great difference when we come to 
investigate motives. But the report of a transaction 
sometimes represents the real facts no better than 
the labored variation does the simple air; which, 
amidst so many shakes and flourishes, might not be 
recognized even by the person who composed it. 



22 £SSAY8. 

Then, again, how can we ensure that we rightly 
interpret those actions which we exactly know? 
Perhaps one of the first motives that we look for 
is self-interest, when we want to explain an action ; 
but we have scarcely ever such a knowledge of the 
nature and fortunes of another, as to be able to 
decide what is his interest, much less what it may 
appear to him to be : besides, a man's fancies, his 
envy, his wilfulness, every day interfere with and 
override his interests. He will know this himself, 
and will often try to conceal it by inventing motives 
of self-interest to account for his doing what he has 
a mind to do. 

It is well to be thoroughly impressed with a 
sense of the difficulty of judging about others ; still, 
judge we must, and sometimes very hastily: the 
purposes of life require it. We have, however, more 
and better materials, sometimes, than we are aware 
of: we must not imagine that they are always deep- 
seated and recondite : they often lie upon the sur- 
face. Indeed, the primary character of a man is 
especially discernible in trifles ; for then he acts, as 
it were, almost unconsciously. It is upon the method 
of observing and testing these things, that a just 
knowledge of individual men in great measure de- 



ON OUR JUDGMENTS OF OTHER MEN. ^3 

pends. You may learn more of a person even by a 
little converse with him than by a faithful outline of 
his history. The most important of his actions may 
be any thing but the most significant of the man ; 
for they are likely to be the results of many things 
besides his nature. To understand that, I doubt 
whether you might not learn more from a good por- 
trait of him, than from two or three of the most 
prominent actions of his life. Indeed, if men did 
not express much of their nature in their manners, 
appearance, and general bearing, we should be at a 
sad loss to make up our minds how to deal with 
each other. 

In judging of others, it is important to distinguish 
those parts of the character and intellect which are 
easily discernible from those which require much 
observation. In the intellect, we soon perceive 
whether a man has wit, acuteness, or logical power. 
It is not easy to discover whether he has judgment. 
And it requires some study of the man to ascertain 
whether he. has practical wisdom ; which, indeed, 
is a result of high moral as well as intellectual 
qualities. 

In the moral nature, we soon detect selfishness, 
egotism, and exaggeration. Carelessness about 
truth is soon found out ; you see it in a thousand 
3 



24 JESS ATS. 

little things. On the other hand, it is very difficult 
to come to a right conclusion about a man's temper, 
until you have seen a great deal of him. Of his 
tastes, some will lie on the surface, others not ; for 
there is a certain resei*ve about most people in 
speaking of the things they like best. Again, it is 
always a hard matter to understand any man's 
feelings. Nations differ in their modes of 
expressing feelings, and how much more indi- 
vidual men ! 

There are certain cases in which we are peculiarly 
liable to err in our judgments of others. Thus, I 
think, we are all disposed to dislike, in a manner 
disproportionate to their demerits, those who offend 
us by pretension of any kind. We are apt to fancy 
that they despise us ; whereas, all the while, per- 
haps, they are only courting our admiration. There 
are people who wear the worst part of their char- 
acters outwards : they offend our vanity ; they rouse 
our fears ; and under these influences we omit to 
consider how often a scornful man is tender-hearted, 
and an assuming man one who longs to be popular 
and to please. 

Then there are characters of such a different kind 
from our own, that we are without the means of 
measuring and appreciating them. A man who 



ON THE EXERCISE OF BENEVOLENCE. 3^ 

has no humor, how difficult for him to understand 
one who has ! 

But of all the errors in judging of others, some of 
the worst are made in judging of those who are 
nearest to us. They think that we have entirely- 
made up our minds about them, and are apt to show 
us that sort of behavior only which they know we 
expect. Perhaps, too, they fear us, or they are con- 
vinced that we do not and cannot sympathize with 
them. And so we move about in a mist, and talk 
of phantoms as if they were living men, and think 
that we understand those who never interchange any 
discourse with us but the talk of the market-place ; 
or if they do, it is only as players who are playing a 
part, set down in certain words, to be eked out with 
the stage gestures for each affection, who would 
deem themselves little else than mad if they were 
to say out to us any thing of their own. 



>>«<c 



ON THE EXERCISE OF BENEVOLENCE. 

TT TITH the most engaging objects of benevo- 

^ ^ lence around them, men consume the largest 

part of their existence in the acquisition of money, 



36 



ESSAYS. 



or of knowledge ; or in sighing for the opportunities 
of advancement ; or in doting over some unavailing 
sorrow. Or, as it often happens, they are out- 
wardly engaged in slaving over the forms and follies 
of the world, while their minds are given up to 
dreams of vanity ; or to long-drawn reveries, a mere 
indulgence of their fancy. And yet hard by them 
are groans and horrors, and sufferings of all kinds, 
which seem to penetrate no deeper than their senses. 
Let them think what boundless occupations there 
are before us all ! Consider the masses of human 
beings in our manufacturing towns and crowded 
cities, left to their own devices — the destitute 
peasantry of our sister-land — the horrors of slavery 
wherever it exists — the general aspect of the com- 
mon people — the pervading want of education — the 
fallacies and falsehoods which are left, unchecked, 
to accomplish all the mischief that is in them — the 
many legal and executive reforms not likely to meet 
with much popular impulse, and requiring, on that 
account, the more diligence from those who have 
any insight into such matters. By employing him- 
self upon any one of the above subjects, a man is 
likely to do some good. If he only ascertains what 
has been done, and what is doing, in any of these 
matters, he may be of great service. A man of 



ON THE EXERCISE OF BENEVOLENCE. 



37 



real information becomes a centre of opinion, and 
therefore of action. 

Many a man will say : " This is all very true ; 
there certainly is a great deal of good to be done. 
Indeed, one is perplexed what to choose as one's 
point of action ; and still more how to begin upon 
it." To which I would answer : Is there no one 
service for the great family of man which has yet 
interested you ? Is no work of benevolence brought 
near to you by the peculiar circumstances of your 
life.'* If there is, follow it at once. ' If not, still 
you must not wait for something apposite to occur. 
Take up any subject relating to the welfare of man- 
kind, the first that comes to hand : read about it : 
think about it : trace it in the world, and see if it 
will not come to your heart. How listlessly the 
eye glances over the map of a country upon which 
we have never set foot ! On the other hand, with 
what satisfaction we contemplate the mere outline 
only of a land we have once travelled over ! Think 
earnestly upon any subject, investigate it sincerely, 
and you are sure to love it. You will not complain 
again of not knowing whither to direct your atten- 
tion. There have been enthusiasts about heraldry. 
Many have devoted themselves to chess. Is the 
welfare of living, thinking, suffering, eternal creat- 



38 E83AT8. 

ures, less interesting than "argent" and "azure,** 
or than the knight's move, and the progress of a 
pawn? 

There are many persons, doubtless, who feel the 
wants and miseries of their fellow-men tenderly, if 
not deeply ; but this feeling is not of the kind to 
induce them to exert themselves out of their own 
small circle. They have little faith in their in- 
dividual exertions doing aught towards a remedy 
for any of the great disorders of the world. If an 
evil of magnitude forces itself upon their attention, 
they take shelter in a comfortable sort of belief 
that the course of events, or the gradual enlighten- 
ment of mankind, or, at any rate, something which 
is too large for them to have any concern in, will 
set it right. In short, they are content to remain 
spectators; or, at best, to wait until an occasion 
shall arrive when their benevolence may act at 
once, with as little preparation of means, as if it 
were something magical. 

But opportunities of doing good, though abundant 
and obvious enough, are not exactly fitted to our 
hands : we must be alert in preparing ourselves for 
them. Benevolence requires method and activity 
in its exercise. It is by no means the same sort of 
thing as the indolent good humor with which a 



ON THE EXERCISE OF BENEVOLENCE. 3^ 

well-fed man, reclining on a sunny bank, looks 
upon the working world around him. 

As to the notion of waiting for the power to do 
good, it is one that we must never listen to. Surely 
the exercise of a man's benevolence is not to depend 
upon his worldly good fortune ! Every man has 
to-day the power of laying some foundation for 
doing good, if not of doing it. And whoever does 
not exert himself until he has a large power of 
carrying out his good intentions, may be sure that 
he will not make the most of the opportunity when 
it comes. It is not in the heat of action, nor when 
a man, from his position, is likely to be looked up 
to with some reverence, that he should have to 
begin his search for facts or principles. He should 
then come forth to apply results ; not to work them 
out painfully, and perhaps precipitately, before the 
eyes of the world* 

The worldly-wise may ask: "Will not these 
benevolent pursuits prevent a man from following 
with sufficient force (what they call) his legitimate 
occupations.'*" I do not see why. Surely Provi- 
dence has not made our livelihood such an all- 
absorbing affair, that it does not leave us room or 
time for our benevolence to work in. However, if 



^o E 88 ATS. 

a man will only give up that portion of his thinking 
time which he spends upon vain-glory, upon imagin- 
ing, for instance, what other people are thinking 
about him, he will have time and energy enough to 
pursue a very laborious system of benevolence. 

I do not mean to contend that active benevolence 
may not hinder a man's advancement in the world ; 
for advancement greatly depends upon a reputation 
for excellence in some one thing of which the world 
perceives that it has present need : and an obvious 
attention to other things, though perhaps not in- 
compatible with the excellence itself, may easily 
prevent a person from obtaining a reputation for it. 
But any deprivation of this kind would be readily 
endured if we only took the view of tf>ur social rela- 
tions which Christianity opens to us. We should 
then see that benevolence is not a thing to be taken 
up by chance, and put by at once to make way for 
eyer)^ employment which savors of self-interest. 
Benevolence is the largest part of our business, 
beginning with our home duties, and extending 
itself to the utmost verge of- humanity. A vague 
feeling of kindness towards our fellow-creatures is 
no state of mind to rest in. It is not enough for us 
to be able to say that nothing of human interest is 
alien to us, and that we give our acquiescence, or 



ON THE EXERCISE OF BENEVOLENCE. ai 

indeed our transient assistance, to any scheme of 
benevolence that may come in our way. No : in 
promoting the welfare of others we must toil ; we 
must devote to it earnest thought, constant care, 
and zealous endeavor. What is more, we must do 
all this with patience ; and be ready, in the same 
cause, to make an habitual sacrifice of our own 
tastes and wishes. Nothing short of this is the 
visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, and clothing 
the naked, which our creed requires of us. 

Kindness to animals is no unworthy exercise of 
benevolence. We hold that the life of brutes per- 
ishes with their breath, and that they are never to 
be clothed again with consciousness. The inevitable 
shortness then of their existence should plead for 
them touchingly. The insects on the surface of the 
water, poor ephemeral things, who would need- 
lessly abridge their dancing pleasure of to-day.? 
Such feelings we should have towards the whole 
animate creation. To those animals, over which 
we are masters for however short a time, we have 
positive duties to perform. This seems too obvious 
to be insisted upon ; but there are persons who act 
as though they thought they could buy the right 
of ill-treating any of God's creatures. 



A2 ESSAYS. 

We should never in any way consent to the ill- 
treatment of animals, because the fear of ridicule, 
or some other fear, prevents our interfering. As to 
there being any thing really trifling in any act of 
humanity, however slight, it is moral blindness to 
suppose so. The few moments in the course of 
each day which a man absorbed in some worldly 
pursuit may carelessly expend in kind words or tri- 
fling charities to those around him, and kindness to 
an animal is one of these, are perhaps, in the sight 
of Heaven, the only time that he has lived to any 
purpose worthy of recording. 



3j<«C 



DOMESTIC RULE. 

npACITUS says of Agricola, that " he governed 
his family, which many find to be a harder 
task than to govern a province.** And the worst 
of this difficulty is, that its existence is frequently 
unperceived, until it comes to be pressingly felt. 

For either a man thinks that he must needs under- 
stand those whom he sees daily, and also, perhaps, 
that it is no great matter whether he understand 
them or not, if he is resolved to do his duty by them ; 



DOMESTIC RULE. 4- 

or he believes that in domestic rule there is much 
license, an-d that each occasion is to be dealt with 
by some law made at the time, or after ; or he 
imagines that any domestic matter which he may 
leave to-day omitted or ill-done can be repaired at 
his leisure, when the concerns of the outer world 
are not so pressing as they are at present. 

But each day brings its own duties, and carries 
them along with it ; and they are as waves broken 
on the shore, many like them coming after, but none 
ever the same. And amongst all his duties, as there 
are none in which a man acts more by himself and 
can do more harm with less outcry from the world, 
so there are none requiring more forethought and 
watchfulness than those which arise from his 
domestic relations. Nor can there be a reasonable 
hope of his fulfilling those duties while he is 
ignorant of the feelings, however familiar he 
may be with the countenances, of those around 
him. 

The extent and power of domestic rule are veiy 
great: but this is often overlooked by the persons 
who possess it ; and they are rather apt to under- 
rate the influence of their own authority. They can 
hardly imagine how strongly it is felt by others, 



44 ESSAYS. 

unless they see it expressed in something outward. 
The effects of this mistake are often increased by 
another, which comes into operation when men are 
deahng with their inferiors in rank and education : 
in which case, they are rather apt to fancy that the 
natural sense of propriety, which would put the right 
limit to familiar intercourse, belongs only to the 
well-educated or the well-born. And from either of 
these causes, or both united, they are led, perhaps, 
to add to their authority by a harshness not their 
own, rather than to impair it, as they fancy, by that 
degree of freedom which they must allow to those 
around them, if they would enter into their feelings 
and understand their dispositions. Perhaps there 
are some persons who think that they can manage 
very well without this familiar intercourse ; and 
certainly there is but little occasion for knowing 
much about the nature of those whom you intend 
only to restrain. Coercion, however, is but a small 
part of government. 

We should always be most anxious to avoid pro- 
voking the rebel spirit of the will in those who are 
intrusted to our guidance : we should not attempt 
to tie them up to their duties, like galley-slaves to 
their labor. We should be very careful that, in 



DOMESTIC RULE. a^ 

our anxiety to get the outward part of an action per- 
formed to our mind, we do not destroy that germ 
of spontaneousness which could alone give any sig- 
nificance to the action. God has allowed free will 
to man, for the choice of good or evil ; and is it 
likely that it is left to us to make our fellow- 
creatures virtuous by word of command ? We may 
insist upon a routine of proprieties being performed 
with soldierlike • precision ; but there is no drilling 
of men's hearts. 

It is a great thing to maintain the just limits of 
domestic authority, and to place it upon its right 
foundation. You cannot make reason conform to 
it. It may be fair to insist upon a certain thing 
being done, but not that others should agree with 
you in saying that it is the best thing that could 
have been done ; for there cannot be a shorter way 
of making them hypocritical. Your submitting the 
matter at all to their judgments may be gratuitous ; 
but if you do so, you must remember that the Courts 
of Reason recognize no difference of persons. Your 
wishes may fairly outweigh their arguments ; but 
this of course is foreign to the reasonableness or 
unreasonableness of the thing itself, considered 
independently. 



Domestic Rule is founded upon truth and love. 
If it has not both of these, it is nothing better than 
a despotism. 

It requires the perpetual exercise of love in its 
most extended form. You have to learn the dis- 
positions of those under you, and to teach them to 
understand yours. In order to do this, you must 
sympathize with them, and convince them of your 
doing so ; for upon your sympathy v^ill often depend 
their truthfulness. Thus, you must persuade a child 
to place confidence in you, if you wish to form an 
open, upright character. You cannot terrify it into 
habits of truth. On the contrary, are not its earliest 
falsehoods caused by fear, much oftener than from a 
wish to obtain any of its little ends by deceit ? How 
often the complaint is heard from those in domestic 
authority, that they are not confided in ! But they 
forget how hard it is for an inferior to confide in a 
superior, and that he will scarcely venture to do so 
without the hope of some sympathy on the part of 
the latter ; and the more so, as half our confidences 
are about our follies, or what we deem such. 

Every one who has paid the slightest attention to 
this subject knows that domestic rule is built upon 
justice, and therefore upon truth ; but it may not 
have been observed what evils will arise from even 



DOMESTIC RULE. ^tj 

a slight deviation into conventionality. For in- 
stance, there is a common expression about " over- 
looking trifles." But vs^hat many persons should 
say, when they use this expression, is, — That they 
affect not to observe something, w^hen there is no 
reason why they should not openly recognize it. 
Thus they contrive to make matters of offence out of 
things which really have no harm in them. Or the 
expression means that they do not care to take 
notice of something which they really believe to be 
wrong ; and as it is not of much present annoyance 
to them, they persuade themselves that it is not of 
much harm to those who practise it. In either 
case, it is their duty to look boldly at the matter. 
The greater quantity of truth and distinctness you 
can throw into your proceedings, the better. Con- 
nivance creates uncertainty, and gives an example 
of slyness ; and very often you will find that you 
connive at some practice, merely because you have 
not made up your mind whether it is right or wrong, 
and you wish to spare yourself the trouble of think- 
ing. All this Is falsehood. 

Whatever you allow in the way of pleasure or of 
liberty, to those under your control, you should 
do it heartily: you should recognize it entirely, 
encourage it, and enter into it. If, on the contrary, 



48 



ESSAYS. 



you do not care for their pleasures, or sympathize 
with their happiness, how can you expect to obtain 
their confidence? And when you tell them that 
you consult their welfare, they, look upon it as some 
abstract idea of your own. They will doubt 
whether you can know what is best for them, if they 
have good reason for thinking that you are likely to 
leave their particular views of happiness entirely 
out of the account. 

We come next to consider some of the various 
means which may be made use of in Domestic Rule. 

Of course it is obvious that his own example 
must be the chief means in any man*s power, by 
which he can illustrate and enforce those duties 
which he seeks to impress upon his household. 

Next to this, praise and blame are among the 
strongest means which he possesses ; and they 
should not depend upon his humor. He should 
not throw a bit of praise at his dependants by way 
of making up for a previous display of anger not 
warranted by the occasion. 

Ridicule is in general to be avoided ; not that it 
is inefficient, perhaps, for the present purpose, but 
because it tends to make a poor and world-fearing 
character. It is too strong a remedy; and can 



DOMESTIC RULE. ^g 

seldom be applied with such just precision as to 
neutralize the evil aimed at, without destroying, at 
the same time, something that is good. 

Still less should it even appear that ridicule is 
directed against that which is good in itself, or 
which may be the beginning of goodness.- There 
is, perhaps, more gentleness required in dealing 
with the infant virtues, than even with the vices, of 
those under our guidance. We should be very 
kind to any attempt at amendment. An idle sneer, 
or a look of incredulity, has been the death of 
many a good resolve. We should also be very 
cautious in reminding those who now would fain 
be wiser, of their rash sayings of evil, of their 
early and uncharitable judgments of others ; other- 
wise we run a great risk of hardening them in evil. 
This is especially to be guarded against with the 
young ; for never, having felt the mutability of all 
human things, nor having lived long enough to 
discover that his former certainties are among the 
strangest things which a man looks back upon in 
the vista of the past : not perceiving that time is 
told by that pendulum, man, which goes backwards 
and forwards in its progress ; nor dreaming that 
the way to some opinions may lie through their 
opposites, — they are mightily ashamed of incon- 
3 



ro £SSA YS. 

sistency, and may be made to look upon reparation 
as a crime. 

The following are some general maxims which 
may be of service to any one in domestic authority. 

The first is to make as few crimes as he can ; 
and not to lay down those rules of practice, which, 
from a careful observation of their consequences he 
has ascertained to be salutary, as if they were so 
many innate truths which all persons alike must at 
once and fully comprehend. 

Let him not attempt to regulate other people's 
pleasures by his own tastes. 

In commanding, it will not always be superfluous 
for him to reflect whether the thing commanded is 
possible. 

In punishing, he should not consult his anger; 
nor in remitting punishment, his ease. 

Let him consider whether any part of what he is 
inclined to call disobedience may have resulted from 
an insufficient expression of his own wishes. 

He should be inclined to trust largely. 



ADVICK 



ADVICE. 



51 



\ DVICE is sure of a hearing when it coincides 
with our previous conclusions, and therefore 
comes in the shape of praise or of encouragement. 
It is not unwelcome when we derive it for ourselves, 
by applying the moral of some other person's life 
to our own, though the points of resemblance which 
bring it home may be far from flattering, and the 
advice itself far from palatable. We can even 
endure its being addressed to us by another, when 
it is interwoven with regret at some error, not of . 
ours, but of his ; and when we see that he throws 
in a little advice to us, by way of introducing, with 
more grace, a full recital of his own misfortunes. 

But in general it is with advice as with taxation : 
we can endure very little of either, if they come to 
us in the direct way. They must not thrust them- 
selves upon us. We do not understand their knock- 
ing at our doors ; besides, they always choose such 
inconvenient times, and are for ever talking of 
arrears. 

There is a wide difference between the advice 
which is thrust upon you, and that which you have 



^3 ESSAYS, 

to seek for ; the general carelessness of the one, 
and the caution of the other, are to be taken into 
account. In sifting the latter, you must take care 
to separate the decorous part of it. I mean all 
that which the adviser puts in, because he thinks 
the world would expect it from a person of his 
character and station, — all that which was to sound 
well to a third party, of whom, perhaps, the adviser 
stands somewhat in awe. You cannot expect 
him to neglect his own safety. The oracles will 
Philippize as long as Philip is the master ; but 
still they have an inner meaning for Athenian 
ears. 

It is a disingenuous thing to ask for advice, 
when you mean assistance ; and it will be a just 
punishment if you get that which you pretended to 
want. There is a still greater insincerity in affect- 
ing to care about another's advice, when you lay the 
circumstances before him only for the chance of his 
sanctioning a course which you had previously 
resolved on. This practice is noticed by Rochefou- 
cauld, who has also laid bare the falseness of those 
givers of advice who have hardly heard to the end 
of your story, before they have begun to think 
how they can advise upon it to their own interest, 
or their own renown. 



ADVICE. 



53 



It is a maxim of prudence that when you advise a 
man to do something which is for your own interest 
as well as for his, you should put your own motive 
for advising him full in view, with all the weight 
that belongs to it. If you conceal the interest which 
you have in the matter, and he should afterwards 
discover it, he will be resolutely deaf even to that 
part of the argument which fairly does concern 
himself. If the lame man had endeavored to per- 
suade his blind friend that it was pure charity 
which induced him to lend the use of his eyes, you 
may be certain that he never would have been 
carried home, though it was the other's interest to 
carry him. 

To get extended views, you should consult with 
persons who differ from you in disposition, circum- 
stances, and modes of thought. At the same time, 
the most practicable advice may often be obtained 
from those who are of a similar nature to yourself, 
or who understand you so thoroughly that they 
are sure to make their advice personal. This advice 
will contain sympathy ; for as it has been said, a 
man always sympathizes to a certain extent with 
what he understands. It will not, perhaps, be the 
soundest advice that can be given in the abstract, 



54 ESSAYS. 

but it may be that which you can best profit by ; 
for you may be able to act up to it with some 
consistency. This applies more particularly when 
the advice is wanted for some matter which is not 
of a temporary nature, and where a course of action 
will have to be adopted. It is observed in T/ze 
Statesman with much truth, " Nothing can be for a 
man's interest in the long-run which is not founded 
on his character." 

For similar reasons, when you have to give advice, 
you should never forget whom you are addressing, 
and what is practicable for him. You should not 
look about for the wisest thing which can be said, 
but for that which your friend has the heart to 
undertake, and the ability to accomplish. You must 
sometimes feel with him, before you can possibly 
think for him. There is more need of keeping this 
in mind, the greater you know the difference to be 
between your friend's nature and your own. Your 
advice should not degenerate into comparisons 
between what would have been your conduct, and 
what was your friend's. You should be able to 
take the matter up at the point at which it is brought 
to you. It is very well to go back, and to show 
him what might or what ought to have been done, 
if it throws any light upon what is to be done ; or 



ADVICE. 



55 



if you have any other good purpose in such conver- 
sation. But remember that comment, however 
judicious, is not advice ; and that advice should 
always tend to something practicable. 

The advice which we have been just speaking of 
is of that kind which relates to points of conduct. 
If you want to change a man's principles, you may 
have to take him out of himself, as it were ; to show 
him fully the intense difference between your own. 
views and his, and to trace up that difference to its 
source. Your object is not to make him do the best 
with what he has, but to induce him to throw some- 
thing away altogether. 

There are occasions on which a man feels that he 
has so fully made up his mind that hardly any thing 
could move him ; and at the same time he knows 
that he shall meet with much blame from those 
whose good opinion is of value to him, if he acts 
according to that mind. Let him not think to break 
his fall by asking their advice beforehand. As it is, 
they will be severe upon him for not having con- 
sulted them ; but they will be outrageous, if, after 
having consulted them, he then acts in direct oppo- 
sition to their counsel. Besides, they will not be so 
inclined to parade the fact of their not having been 



56 



ESSAYS. 



consulted, as they would of their having given 
judicious advice which was unhappily neglected. 
I am not speaking of those instances in which a 
man is bound to consult others, but of such as con- 
stantly occur, where his consulting them is a thing 
which may be expected, but is not due. 

In seeking for a friend to advise you, look for 
uprightness in him, rather than for ingenuity. It 
frequently happens that all you want is moral 
strength. You can discern consequences well 
enough, but cannot make up your mind to bear 
them. Let your Mentor also be a person of nice 
conscience, for such a one is less likely to fall into 
that error to which we are all so liable, of advising 
our friends to act with less forbearance and with 
less generosity, than we should be inclined to show 
ourselves, if the case were our own. " If I were 
you " is a phrase often on our lips ; but we take good 
care not to disturb our identity, not to quit the 
disengaged position of a bystander. We recom- 
mend the course w^e might pursue if we were 
acting for you in your absence, but such as you 
never ought to undertake in your own behalf. 

Besides being careful for your own sake about 
the persons whom you go to for advice, you should 



SECRECY. ^7 

be careful also for theirs. It is an act of selfishness 
unnecessarily to consult those who are likely to 
feel a peculiar difficulty or delicacy in being your 
advisers, and who, perhaps, had better not be 
informed at all about the matter. 



3>«^C 



SECRECY. 

1 p OR once that secrecy is formally imposed upon 
you, it is implied a hundred times by the con- 
current circumstances. All that your friend says to 
you, as to his friend, is intrusted to you only. Much 
of what a man tells you in the hour of affliction, 
in sudden anger, or in any outpouring of his heart, 
should be sacred. In his craving for sympathy, 
he has spoken to you as to his own soul. 

To repeat what you have heard in social inter- 
course is sometimes a sad treachery ; and when it is 
not treacherous, it is often foolish. For you com- 
monly relate but a part of what has happened ; and 
even if you are able to relate that part with fairness, 
it is still as likely to be misconstrued as a word of 
many meanings, in a foreign tongue, without the 
context. 



58 



ESSAYS. 



There are few conversations which do not imply 
some degree of mutual confidence, however slight. 
And in addition to that which is said in confidence, 
there is generally something which is peculiar, 
though not confidential ; which is addressed to the 
present company alone, though not confided to their 
secrecy. It is meant for them, or for persons like 
them, and they are expected to understand it rightly. 
So that when a man has no scruple in repeating all 
that he hears to anybody that he meets, he pays but 
a poor compliment to himself; for he seems to take 
it for granted that what was said in his presence 
would have been said, in the same words, at any time, 
aloud, and in the market-place. In short, that he 
is the average man of mankind ; which I doubt much 
whether any man would like to consider himself. 

On the other hand, there is an habitual and un- 
meaning reserve in some men, which makes secrets 
without any occasion ; and it is the least to say of 
such things that they are needless. Sometimes it 
proceeds from an innate shyness or timidity of 
disposition ; sometimes from a temper naturally 
suspicious ; or it may be the result of having been 
frequently betrayed or oppressed. From whatever 
cause it comes, it is a failing. As cunning is some 
men's strength, so this sort of reserve is some men's 



SECRECY. ^g 

prudence. The man who does not know when, or 
how much, or to whom to confide, will do well in 
maintaining a Pythagorean silence. It is his best 
course. I would not have him change it on any 
account ; I only wish him not to mistake it for 
wisdom. 

That happy union of frankness and reserve which 
is to be desired comes not by studying rules, either 
for candor or for caution. It results chiefly from 
an uprightness of purpose, enlightened by a pro- 
found and delicate care for the feelings of others. 
This will go very far in teaching us what to confide, 
and what to conceal, in bur own affairs ; what to 
repeat, and what to suppress, in those of other 
people. The stone in which nothing is seen, and 
the polished metal which reflects all things, are both 
alike hard and insensible. 

When a matter is made public, to proclaim that 
it had ever been confided to your secrecy may be no 
trifling breach of confidence ; and it is the only one 
which is then left for you to commit. 

With respect to the kind of people to be trusted, 
it may be observed that grave, proud men are very 



5o ESSAYS. 

safe confidants ; and that those persons, who have 
ever had to conduct any business in which secrecy 
was essential, are likely to acquire a habit of reserve 
for all occasions. 

On the other hand, it is a question whether a 
secret will escape sooner by means of a vain man or 
a simpleton. There are some people who play 
with a secret until at last it is suggested by their 
manner to some shrewd person who knows a little 
of the circumstances connected with it. There are 
others whom it is unsafe to trust : not that they are 
vain, and so wear the secret as an ornament ; not 
that they are foolish, and so let it drop by accident ; 
not that they are treacherous, and sell it for their 
own advantage. But they are simple-minded 
people, with whom the world has gone smoothly, 
who would not themselves make any mischief of 
th^ secret which they disclose, and therefore do not 
see what harm can come of telling it. 

Before you make any confidence, you should con 
sider whether the thing you wish to confide is of 
weight enough to be a secret. Your small secrets 
require the greatest care. Most persons suppose 
that they have kept them sufficiently when they 
have been silent about them for a certain time ; and 



SECRECY. 6l- 

this is hardly to be wondered at, if there is nothing 
in their nature to remind a person that they were 
told to him as secrets. 

There is sometimes a good reason for using con- 
cealment even with your dearest friends. It is that 
you may be less liable to be reminded of your 
anxieties when you have resolved to put them aside. 
Few persons have tact enough to perceive when to 
be silent, and when to offer you counsel or condo- 
lence. 

You should be careful not to intrust another 
unnecessarily with a secret which it may be a hard 
matter for him to keep, and which may expose him 
to somebody's displeasure, when it is hereafter dis- 
covered that he was the object of your confidence. 
Your desire for aid, or for sympathy, is not to be 
indulged by dragging other people into your mis- 
fortunes. 

There is as much responsibility in imparting 
your own secrets, as in keeping those of your 
neighbor. 



THE SECOND PART. 



" The wisdom touching negotiation or business hath not been hitherto col- 
lected into writing, to the great derogation of learning, and the professors of 
learning. For from this root springeth chiefly that note or opinion, which by 
U3 is expressed in adage to this eflfect, ' that there is no great concurrence 
between learning and wisdom ' For of the three wisdoms which we have^set 
down to pertain to civil life, for wisdom of behavior, it is by learned men 
for the most part despised, as an inferior to virtue, and an enemy to medita- 
tion ; for wisdom of government, they acquit themselves well when they are 
called to it, but that happeneth to few; but for the wisdom of business, 
wherein man's life is most conversant, there be no books of it, except some 
few scattered advertisements, that have no proportion to the magnitude of 
this subject. For if books were written of this, as the other, I doubt not but 
learned men with mean experience would far excel men of long experience 
without learning, and outshoot them in their own bow." 

Bacon's Advancement of Learning 



PART II. 



ON THE EDUCATION OF A MAN OF 
BUSINESS. 

nr^HE essential qualities for a man of business 
■ are of a moral nature : these are to be culti- 
Tated first. He must learn betimes to love truth. 
That same love of truth will be found a potent 
charm to bear him safely through the w^orld's entan- 
glements ; I mean safely in the most vi^orldly sense. 
Besides, the love of truth not only makes a man 
act with more simplicity, and therefore with less 
chance of error, but it conduces to the highest 
intellectual development. The following passage 
in The Statesman gives the reason : " The corre- 
spondencies of wisdom and goodness are manifold ; 
and that they will accompany each other is to Ki 
inferred, not only because men's wisdom makes 
them good, but also because their gcfodness makes 
them wise. Questions of right and wrong are a 
5 



C6 ' ESSAYS. 

perpetual exercise of the faculties of those who 
are solicitous as to the righi": and wrong of what 
they do and see ; at. d a deep interest of the heart 
in these questions carries with it a deeper cul- 
tivation of the understanding than can be easily 
effected by any other excitement to intellectual 
activity. " 

What has just been said of the love of truth 
applies also to other moral qualities. / Thus, 
charity enlightens the understanding quite as 
much as it purifies the heart.^ And indeed knowl- 
edge is not more girt about with power than 
goodness is with wisdom. 

The next thing in the training of one who is to 
become a man of business will be for him to form 
principles ; for without these, when thrown on the 
sea of action, he will be without rudder and com- 
pass. They are the best results of study. Whether 
it is history, or political economy, or ethics, that he 
is studying, these principles are to be the reward of 
his labor. A principle resembles a law in the 
physical world ; though it can seldom have the 
same certainty, as the facts which it has to explain 
and embrace do not admit of being weighed or 
numbered with the same exactness as material 



EDUCATION OF A MAN OF BUSINESS. 



67 



things. The principles which our student adopts 
at first may be unsound, may be insufficient, but he 
must not neglect to form some ; and must only 
nourish a love of truth that will not allow him to 
hold to any, the moment that he finds them to 
be erroneous. 

Much depends upon the temperament of a man 
of business. It should be hopeful, that it may bear 
him up against the faint-heartedness, the folly, 
the falsehood, and the numberless discouragements 
which even a prosperous man will have to endure. 
It should also be calm ; for else he may be driven 
wild by any great pressure of business, and lose 
his time, and his head, in rushing from one 
unfinished thing, to begin something else. Now 
this wished-for conjunction of the calm and the 
hopeful is very rare. It is, however, in every 
man's power to study well his own temperament, 
and to provide against the defects in it. 

A habit of thinking for himself is one which may 
be acquired by the solitary student. But the habit 
of deciding for himself, so indispensable to a man 
of business, is not to be gained by study. Decision 
is a thing that cannot be fully exercised until it is 



58 JESS ATS. 

actually wanted. You cannot play at deciding. 
You must have realities to deal with. 

It is true that the formation of principles, which 
has been spoken of before, requires decision ; but it 
is of that kind which depends upon deliberate 
judgment: whereas, the decision which is wanted 
in the world's business must ever be within call, 
and does not judge sb much as it foresees and 
chooses. This kind of decision is to be found in 
those who have been thrown early on their own 
resources, or who have been brought up in great 
freedom. 

It would be difficult to lay down any course of 
study, not technical, that would be peculiarly 
fitted to form a man of business. He should be 
brought up in the habit of reasoning closely ; and 
to insure this, there is hardly any thing better for 
him than the study of geometry. 

In any course of study to be laid down for him, 
something like universality should be aimed at, 
which not only makes the mind agile, but gives 
variety of information. Such a system will make 
him acquainted with many modes of thought, 
with various classes of facts, and will enable him 
to understand men better. 



EDUCATION OF A MAN OF BUSINESS. 69 

There will be a time in his youth which may, 
perhaps, be well spent in those studies which 
are of a metaphysical nature. In the investigation 
of some of the great questions of philosophy, a 
breadth and a tone may be given to a man's 
mode of thinking, which will afterwards be of 
signal use to him in the business of every-day 
life. 

We cannot enter here into a description of the 
technical studies for a man of business ; but I may 
point out that there are works which soften the 
transition from the schools to the world, and which 
are particularly needed in a system of education, 
like our own, consisting of studies for the most 
part remote from real life. These works are such 
as tend to give the student that interest in the 
common things about him which he has scarcely 
ever been called upon to feel. They show how 
imagination and philosophy can be woven into 
practical wisdom. ( Such are the writings of Bacon. 
His lucid order, his grasp of the subject, the com- 
prehensiveness of his views, his knowledge of 
mankind, — the greatest perhaps that has ever been 
distinctly given out by any uninspired man, — the 
practical nature of his purposes, and his respect 



70 



ESSAYS. 



for any thing of human interest, render Bacon's 
works unrivalled in their fitness to form the best 
men for the conduct of the highest affairs. 

It is not, however, so much the thing studied, 
as the manner of studying it. Our student is not 
intended to become a learned man, but a man of 
business ; not a " full man," but a " ready man." 
He must be taught to arrange and express what 
he knows. For this purpose let him employ him- 
self in making digests, arranging and classifying 
materials, writing narratives, and in deciding upon 
conflicting evidence. All these exercises require 
method. He must expect that his early at- 
tempts will be clumsy ; he begins, perhaps, by 
dividing his subject in any way that occurs to 
him, with no other view than that of treating 
separate portions of it separately ; he does not per- 
ceive, at first, what things are of one kind, and 
what of another, and what should be the logical 
order of their following. But from such rude be- 
ginnings, method is developed ; and there is hardly 
any degree of toil for which he would not be 
compensated by such a result. He will have a 
sure reward in the clearness of his own views, 
and in the facility of explaining them to others. 
People bring their attention to the man who gives 



EDUCATION OF A MAN OF BUSINESS. tji 

them most profit for it ; and this will be one who 
is a master of method. 



Our student should begin soon to cultivate a 
fluency in writing: I do not mean a flow of 
words, but a habit of expressing his thoughts with 
accuracy, with brevity, and with readiness ; which 
can only be acquired by practice early in life. 
You find persons who, from neglect in this part 
of their education, can express themselves briefly 
and accurately, but only after much care and 
labor. And again, you meet with others who 
cannot express themselves accurately, although 
they have method in their thoughts, and can write 
with readiness ; but they have not been accustomed 
to look to the precise meaning of words : and such 
people are apt to fall into the common error of 
indulging in a great many words, as if it were 
from a sort of hope that some of them might be 
to the purpose. 

In the style of a man of business nothing is 
to be aimed at but plainness and precision. For 
instance, a close repetition of the same word for 
the same thing need not be avoided. The aver- 
sion to such repetitions may be carried too far 
in all kinds of writing. In literature, however, 



72 



ESSAYS. 



you are sel(^om brought to account for mislead- 
ing people ; but in business you may soon be 
called upon to pay the penalty for having shunned 
the word which would exactly have expressed 
your meaning. 

I cannot conclude this essay better than by 
endeavoring to describe what sort of person a 
consummate man of business should be. 

He should be able to fix his attention on 
details, and be ready to give every kind of 
argument a hearing. This will not encumber 
him, for he must have been practised before- 
hand in the exercise of his intellect, and be 
strong in principles. One man collects mate- 
rials together, and there they remain, a shapeless 
heap ; another, possessed of method, can arrange 
what he has collected : but such a man as I would 
describe, by the aid of principles, goes farther, and 
builds with his materials. 

He should be courageous. The courage, how- 
ever, required in civil affairs, is that which be- 
longs rather to the able commander than the mere 
soldier. But any kind of courage is serviceable. 

Besides a stout heart, he should have a patient 
temperament, and a vigorous but disciplined im- 
agination ; and then he will plan boldly, and with 



ON THE TRANSACTION OF BUSINESS. h^ 

large extent of view, execute calmly, and not be 
stretching out his hand for things not yet within 
his grasp. He will let opportunities grow before 
his eyes, until they are ripe to be seized. He 
will think steadily over possible failure, in order 
to provide a remedy or a retreat. There will be 
the strength of repose about him. 

He must have a deep sense of responsibility. 
He must believe in the power and vitality of truth ; 
and in all he does or says should be anxious to 
express as much truth as possible. 

His feeling of responsibility and love of truth 
will almost inevitably endow him with diligence, 
accuracy, and discreetness, — those commonplace 
requisites for a good man of business, without 
which all the rest may never come to be " trans- 
lated into action." 



3K«C 



ON THE TRANSACTION OF BUSINESS. 



*" I ^HIS subject may be divided into two parts. 
I. Dealing with others about business. 2. 
Dealing with the business itself. 



74 



£SSA YS. 



I. Dealing with others about Business, 



The first part of the general subject embraces 
the choice and management of agents, the trans- 
action of business by means of interviews, the 
choice of colleagues and the use of councils. 
Each of these topics will be treated separately. 
There remain, however, certain general rules with 
respect to our dealings with others, which may 
naturally find a place here. 

In your converse with the world avoid any thing 
like a juggling dexterity. The proper use of dex- 
terity Is to prevent 3^our being circumvented by 
the cunning of others. It should not be aggres- 
sive. 

Concessions and compromises form a large and 
a very important part of our dealings with others. 
Concessions must generally be looked upon as 
distinct defeats ; and you must expect no gratitude 
for them. I am far from saying that it may not 
be wise to make concessions, but this will be done 
more wisely when you understand the nature of 
them. 

In making compromises, do not think to gain 
much by concealing your views and wishes. You 



ON THE TRANSACTION OF BUSINESS. ^ fj^ 

are as likely to suffer from its not being known how 
to please or satisfy you, as from any attempt to over- 
reach you, grounded on a knowledge of your wishes. 

Delay is in some instances to be adopted ad- 
visedly. It sometimes brings a person to reason 
when nothing else could ; when his mind is so 
occupied with one idea, that he completely over- 
estimates its relative importance. He can hardly 
be brought to look at the subject calmly by any 
force of reasoning. For this disease time is the 
only doctor. 

A good man of business is very watchful, over 
both himself and others, to prevent things from 
being carried against his sense of right in mo- 
ments of lassitude. After a matter has been much 
discussed, whether to the purpose or not, there 
comes a time when all parties are anxious that it 
should be settled ; and there is then some danger 
of the handiest way of getting rid of the matter 
being taken for the best. 

It is often worth while to bestow much pains in 
gaining over foolish people to your way of think- 
ing ; and you should do it soon. Your reasons will 



76 



ASSAYS. 



always have some weight with the wise. But if at 
first you omit to put your arguments before the 
foolish, they will form their prejudices ; and a fool 
is often very consistent, and very fond of repetition. 
He will be repeating his folly in season and out of 
season, until at last it has a hearing ; and it is hard 
if it does not sometimes chime in with external 
circumstances. 

A man of business should take care to consult 
occasionally with persons of a nature quite different 
from his own. To very few are given all the 
qualities requisite to form a good man of business. 
Thus a man may have the sternness and the fixed- 
ness of purpose so necessary in the conduct of 
affairs, yet these qualities prevent him, perhaps, 
from entering into the characters of those about him. 
He is likely to want tact. He will be unprepared 
for the extent of versatility and vacillation in other 
men. But these defects and oversights might be 
remedied by consulting with persons whom he 
knows to be possessed of the qualities supplement- 
ary to his own. Men of much depth of mind can 
bear a great deal of counsel ; for it does not easily 
deface their own character, nor render their pur- 
poses indistinct. 



ON THE TRANSACTION OF BUSINESS. ijtj 

2. Dealing with the Business itself. 

The first thing to be considered in this division of 
the subject is the collection and arrangement of 
your materials. Do not fail to begin with the 
earliest history of the matter under consideration. 
Be careful not to give way to any particular theory, 
while you are merely collecting materials, lest it 
should influence you in the choice of them. You 
must work for yourself; for what you reject may be 
as important for you to have seen and thought 
about, as what you adopt : besides, it gives you a 
command of the subject, and a comparative fear- 
lessness of surprise, which you will never have, if 
you rely on other people for your materials. In 
some cases, however, you may save time by not 
laboring much, beforehand, at parts of the subject 
which are nearly sure to be worked out in discus- 
sion. 

When you have collected and arranged your in- 
formation, there comes the task of deciding upon it. 
To make this less difficult, you must use method, 
and practise economy in thinking. You must not 
weary yourself by considering the same thing in the 
same way ; just oscillating over it, as it were ; 



^3 ESSAYS. 

seldom making much progress, and not marking the 
little that you have made. You must not lose your 
attention in reveries about the subject, but must 
bring yourself to the point by such questions as 
these: What has been done? What is the state of 
the case at present? What can be done next? 
What ought to be done? Express in writing the 
answers to your questions. Use the pen : there is no 
magic in it, but it prevents the mind from staggering 
about. It forces you to methodize your thoughts. 
It enables you to survey the matter with a less tired 
eye. Whereas in thinking vaguely, you not only 
lose time, but you acquire a familiarity with the 
husk of the subject, which is absolutely injurious. 
Your apprehension becomes dull ; you establish 
associations of ideas which occur again and again 
to distract your attention ; and you become more 
tired than if you had really been employed in 
mastering the subject. 

When you have arrived at your decision, you have 
to consider how you shall convey it. In doing this, 
be sure that you very rarely, if ever, say any thing 
which is not immediately relevant to the subject. 
Beware of indulging in maxims, in abstract propo- 
sitions, or in any thing of that kind. Let your sub- 
ject fill the whole of what you say. Human affairs 



ON TEE TRANSACTION OF BUSINESS. ^r^ 

are so wide, subtle, and complicated, that the most 
sagacious man had better content himself with 
pronouncing upon those points alone upon which 
his decision is called for. 

It will often be a nice question whether or not 
to state the motives for your decisions. Much will 
depend upon the nature of the subject, upon the 
party whom you have to address, and upon your 
power of speaking out the whole truth. When you 
can give all your motives, it will in most cases be 
just to others, and eventually good for yourself, to 
do so. If you can only state some of them, then 
you must consider whether they are likely to mis- 
lead, or whether they tend to the full truth. And 
for your own sake there is this to be considered in 
giving only a part of your reasons : that those 
which you give are generally taken to be the whole, 
or at any rate the best that you have. And, here- 
after, you may find yourself precluded from using 
an argument which turns out to be a very sound, 
one, which had great weight with you, but which 
you were at the time unwilling, or did not think it 
necessary, to put forward. 

When you have to communicate the motives for 
an unfavorable decision, you will naturally study 
how to convey them so as to give least pain, and to 



So ^!S3A YS. 

insure least discussion. These are not unworthy 
objects ; but they are immediate ones, and therefore 
likely to have their full weight with you. Beware 
that your anxiety to attain them does not carry you 
into an implied falsehood ; for, to say the least of 
it, evil is latent in that. Each day's converse with 
the world ought to confirm us in the maxim that a 
bold but not unkind sincerity should be the ground- 
work of all our dealings. 

It will often be necessary to make a general state- 
ment respecting the history of some business. It 
should be lucid, yet not overburdened with details. 
It must have method not merely running through it, 
but visible upon it: it must have method in its 
form. You must build it up, beginning at the 
beginning, giving each part its due weight, and not 
hurrying over those steps which happen to be 
peculiarly familiar to yourself. You must thorough- 
ly enter into the ignorance of others, and so avoid 
forestalling your conclusions. The best teachers 
are those who can seem to forget what they know 
full well ; who work out results, which have be- 
come axioms in their minds, with all the interest 
of a beginner, and with footsteps no longer than 
his. 



ON THE TRANSACTION OF BUSINESS. 8 1 

It is a good practice to draw up, and put on 
record, an abstract of the reasons upon which you 
have come to a decision on any complicated sub- 
ject ; so that if it is referred to, there is but little 
labor in making yourself master of it again. Of 
course this practice will be more or less necessary, 
according as your decision has been conveyed with 
a reserved or with a full statement of the reasons 
upon which it was grounded. 

Of all the correspondence you receive, a concise 
record should be kept ; which should also contain 
a note of what was done upon any letter, and of 
where it was sent to, or put away. Documents 
relating to the same subject should be carefully 
brought together. You should endeavor to establish 
such a system of arranging your papers as may 
insure their being readily referred to, and yet not 
require too much time and attention to be carried 
into daily practice. Fac-similes should be kept of 
all the letters which you send out. 

These seem little things ; and so they are, unless 
you neglect them. 



82 ESSAYS. 

ON THE CHOICE AND MANAGEMENT 
OF AGENTS. 

'T^HE choice of agents is a difficult matter, but 
any labor that you may bestow upon it is 
likely to be well repaid ; for you have to choose 
persons for whose faults you are to be punished ; 
to whom you are to be the whipping-boy. 

In the choice of an agent, it is not sufficient to 
ascertain what a man knows, or to make a cata- 
logue of his qualities ; but you have to find out 
how he will perform a particular service. You 
may be right in concluding that such an office 
requires certain qualities, and you may discern 
that such a man possesses most of them ; and in 
the absence of any means of ijiaking a closer trial, 
you may have done the best that you could do. 
But some deficiency, or some untoward combina- 
tion of these qualities, may unfit him for the office. 
Hence the value of any opportunity, however 
slight, of observing his conduct in matters similar 
to those for which you want him. 

Our previous knowledge of men will sometimes 
mislead us entirely, even when we apply it to 



CHOICE AND MANAGEMENT OF AGENTS. 



83 



circumstances but little different, as we think, from 
those in which we have actually observed their 
behavior. For instance, 3^ou might naturally 
imagine that a man who shows an irritable tem- 
per in his conversation is likely to show a similar 
temper throughout the conduct of his business. 
But experience does not confirm this ; for you will 
often find that men who are intemperate in speech 
are cautious in writing. 

The best agents are, in general, to be found 
amongst those persons who have a strong sense of 
responsibility. Under this feeling a man will be 
likely to grudge no pains : he will pay attention to 
minute things ; and, what is of much importance, 
he will prefer being considered ever so stupid, 
rather than pretend to understand his orders before 
he does so. 

You should behave to your subordinate agents in 
such a manner that they should not be afraid to be 
frank with you. They should be able to comment 
freely upon your directions, and may thus become 
your best counsellors. For those who are intrusted 
with the execution of any work are likely to see 
things which have been overlooked by the person 
who designed it, however sagacious he may be. 



S4 



ESSAT8. 



You must not interfere unnecessarily with your 
agents, as it gives them the habit of leaning too 
much upon you. Sir Walter Scott says of Can- 
ning, " I fear he works himself too hard, under the 
great error of trying to do too much with his own 
hand, and to see every thing with his own eyes. 
Whereas the greatest general and the first statesman 
must, in many cases, be content to use the eyes and 
fingers of others, and hold themselves contented 
with the exercise of the greatest care in the choice 
of implements." Most men of vigorous minds and 
nice perceptions will be apt to interfere too much ; 
but it should always be one of the chief objects of 
a person in authority to train up those around him 
to do without him. He should try to give them 
some self-reliance. It should be his aim to create a 
standard as to the way in which things ought to be 
done, not to do them all himself. That standard 
is likely to be maintained for some time, in case of 
his absence, illness, or death ; and it will be applied 
daily to many things that must be done without a 
careful inspection on his part, even when he is in 
full vigor. 

With respect to those agents whom you employ 
to represent you, your inclination should be to treat 



CHOICE AND MANAGEMENT OF AGENTS. 85 

them with hearty confidence. In justice to them, 
as well as for your own sake, the limits which you 
lay down for their guidance should be precise. 
Within those limits you should allow them a large 
discretionary power. You must be careful not to 
blame your agent for departing from your orders, 
when in fact the discrepancy which you notice is 
nothing more than the usual difference in the ways 
in which different men set about the same object, 
even when they employ similar means for its 
accomplishment. For a difference of this kind you 
should have been prepared. But if you are in 
haste to blame your representative, your captious- 
ness may throw a great burden upon him unneces- 
sarily. It is not the success of the undertaking only 
that he will thenceforward be intent upon : he will 
be anxious that each step should be done exactly 
after your fancy. And this may embarrass him, 
render him indecisive, and lead to his failing alto- 
gether. 

The surest way to make agents do their work is 
to show them that their efforts are appreciated with 
nicety. For this purpose, you should not only be 
very careful in your promotions and rewards ; but, 
in your daily dealings with them, you should beware 



86 



ESSAYS. 



of making slight or haphazard criticisms on any of 
their proceedings. Your praise should not Only be 
right in the substance, but put upon the right 
foundation : it should point to their most strenuous 
and most judicious exertion. I do not mean that it 
should always be given at the time -of those exer- 
tions being made, but it should show that they had 
not passed by unnoticed. 



3j»;c 



ON THE TREATMENT OF SUITORS. 

'T^HE maxim, " Pars beneficii est, quod petitur 
"^ si bene neges," is misinterpreted by many 
people. They construe " bene " kindly^ which is 
right ; but they are inclined to fancy that this kind- 
ness consists in courtesy, rather than in explicitness 
and truth. 

You should be very loath to encourage expecta- 
tions in a suitor, which you have not then the power 
of fulfilling, or of putting in a course of fulfilment ; 
for Hope, an architect above rules, can build, in 
reverse, a pyramid upon a point. From a very 
little origin there ofter arises a wildness of expecta- 



ON THE TREATMENT OF SUITORS. 87 

tion which quite astounds you. Like the Fisherman 
in the Arabian NigJits^ when you see " a genie 
twice as high as the greatest of giants," you may 
well wonder how he could have come out of so 
small a vessel ; but in your case there will be no 
chance of persuading the monster to ensconce him- 
self again, for the purpose of convincing you that 
such a feat is not impossible. 

In addition also to the natural delusions of hope, 
there is sometimes the artifice of pretending to take 
your words for more than they are well known to 
mean. 

There is a deafness peculiar to suitors : they should 
therefore be answered as much as possible in writ- 
ing. The answers should be expressed in simple 
terms ; and all phrases should be avoided which are 
not likely to convey a clear idea to the man who 
hears them for the first time. There are many 
persons who really do not understand forms of 
writing which may have become common to you. 
When they find that courteous expressions mean 
nothing, they think that a wilful deception has been 
practised upon them. And, in general, you should 
consider that people will naturally put the largest 
construction upon every ^jmbiguous expression, and 



S8 ESSAYS. 

every term of courtesy which can be made to 
express any thing at all in their favor. 

It will often be necessary to see applicants ; and 
in this case you must bear in mind that you have 
not only the delusions of hope and the misinterpre- 
tation of language to contend against, but also the 
imperfection of men's memories. If possible, 
therefore, do not let the interview be the termina- 
tion of the matter: let it lead to something in 
writing, so that you may have an opportunity of 
recording what you wished to express. Avoid a 
promising manner, as people will be apt to find 
words for it. Do not resort to evasive answers for 
the purpose only of bringing the interview to a 
close ; nor shrink from giving a distinct denial, 
merely because the person to whom you ought to 
give it is before you, and you would have to witness 
any pain which it might occasion. Let not that 
balance of justice which Corruption could not alter 
one hair's breadth be altogether disturbed by Sen- 
sibility. 

To determine in what cases the refusal of a suit 
should be accompanied by reasons, is a matter of 
considerable difficulty. It must depend very much 
on what portion of the truth you are able to bring 
forward. This was mentioned before as a general 



ON TEE TREATMENT OF SUITORS S9 

principle in the transaction of business, and it may 
be well to abide by it in answering applications. 
You will naturally endeavor to give somewhat of a 
detailed explanation when you are desirous of show- 
ing respect to the person whom you are addressing ; 
but if the explanation is not a sound or a complete 
one, it would be better to see whether the respect 
could not be shown in some other way. 

In many cases, and especially when the suit is 
a mere project of effrontery, it will perhaps be 
prudent to refuse, without entering at all upon 
the grounds of your refusal. In an explanation 
addressed to the applicant, you will be apt to omit 
the special reasons for your refusal, as they are 
likely to be such as would mortify his self-love ; 
and so you lay yourself open to an accusation of 
unfairness, when he finds, perhaps, that you have 
selected some other person, who came as fully 
within the scope of your general objections as he 
did himself. Therefore, where you are not required, 
and do not like to give special reasons, it may 
often be the best course simply to refuse, or to 
couch your refusal in impregnable generalities. 

Remember that in giving any reason at all for 
refusing, you lay some foundation for a future 
request. 



OO ESSAYS. 

Those who have constantly to deal with suitors 
are in danger of giving way too much to disgust at 
the intrusion, importunity, and egotism, which they 
meet with. As an antidote to this, they should 
remember that the suit which is a matter of busi- 
ness to them, and which perhaps, from its hope- 
lessness, they look upon with little interest, seems 
to the suitor himself a thing of absorbing impor- 
tance. And they should expect a man in distress 
to be as unreasonable as a sick person, and as much 
occupied by his own disorder. 



5>S><c 



INTERVIEWS. 

nr^HERE is much that cannot be done without 
interviews. It would often require great 
labor, not only on your part, but also on the part 
of others whom you cannot command, to effect by 
means of writing what may easily be accomplished 
in a single interview. The pen may be a surer, 
but the tongue is a nicer, instrument. In talking, 
most men sooner or later show what is uppermost 
in their minds ; and this gives a peculiar interest to 
verbal communications. Besides, there are looks, 



INTERVIEWS. ^i 

and tones, and gestures, which form a significant 
language of their own. In short, interviews may 
be made very useful, and are, in general, somewhat 
hazardous things ; but many people look upon them 
rather as the pastime of business than as a part of 
it requiring great discretion. 

Interviews are perhaps of most value when they 
bring together several conflicting interests or opin- 
ions, each of which has thus an opportunity of 
ascertaining the amount and variety of opposition 
which it must expect, and so is worn into modera- 
tion. It would take a great deal of writing to effect 
this. 

Interviews are to be resorted to when you wish 
to prevent the other party from pledging himself 
upon a matter which requires much explanation ; 
where 3'ou see what will probably be his answer to 
your first proposition, and know that you have a 
good rejoinder, which you would wish him to hear 
before he commits himself by writing upon the 
subject. In cases of this kind, however, there is the 
similar danger of a man's talking himself into obsti- 
nacy before he has heard all that you have to say. 

Interviews are very serviceable in those matters 
where you would at once be able to come to a deci- 



02 ESS ATS. 

sion, if you did but know the real inclination of the 
other parties concerned ; and, in general, you should 
take care occasionally to see those with whom you 
are dealing, if the thing in question is likely to be 
much influenced by their individual peculiarities, and 
you require a knowledge of the men. Now this 
is the case with the greatest part of human affairs. 

You frequently want verbal communication in 
order to encourage the timid, to settle the undecided, 
and to bring on some definite stage in the proceed- 
ings. 

The above are instances in which interviews are 
to be sought for on their own account ; but they are 
sometimes necessary, merely because people will 
not be satisfied without them. There are persons 
who can hardly believe that their arguments have 
been attended to, until they have had verbal evi- 
dence of the fact. They think that they could 
easily answer all your objections, and that they 
should certainly succeed in persuading you, if they 
had an opportunity of discussing the matter orally ; 
and it may be of importance to remove this delu- 
sion by an interview. 

On the other hand, interviews are to be avoided, 
when you have reasons which determine your mind, 



INTERVIEWS, 93 

but which you cannot give to the other party. If 
you do accede to an interview, you are almost certain 
to be tempted into giving some reasons, and these, 
not being the strong ones, will very likely admit 
of a fair answer ; and so, after much shuffling, you 
will be obliged to resort to an appearance of mere 
wilfulness at last. 

You should also be averse to transacting business 
verbally with very eager, sanguine persons, unless 
you feel that you have sufficient force and readiness 
for it. There are people who do not understand any 
dissent or opposition on your part, unless it is made 
very manifest. They are fully prepossessed by their 
own views, and they go on talking as if you agreed 
with them. Perhaps you feel a delicacy in interrupt- 
ing them, and undeceiving them at once. The time 
for doing so passes by, and ever afterwards they 
quote you as an authority for all their folly. Or it 
ends by your going away pledged to a course of 
conduct which is any thing but what you approve. 

But perhaps there are no interviews less to be 
sought after than those in which you have to appear 
in connection with one or two other parties who have 
exactly the same interest in the matter as your own, 
and must be supposed to speak your sentiments, but 
with whom you have had little or no previous com- 



OA ESSA YS. 

munication, or whose judgment you find that you 
cannot rely upon. In such a case you are continually 
in danger of being compromised by the indiscretion 
of any one of your associates ; for you do not like 
to disown one of your own side before the adverse 
party, or you are afraid of taking all the odium of 
opposition on yourself. You may perhaps be quite 
certain that your indiscreet ally would be as anxious 
as yourself to recall his words if he could perceive 
their consequences ; but these are things which you 
cannot explain to him in that company. 

The men who profit least by interviews are often 
those who are most inclined to resort to them. They 
are irresolute persons, who wish to avoid pledging 
themselves to any thing ; and so they choose an inter- 
view as the safest course which occurs to them. 
Besides, it looks like progress ; and makes them, 
as they say, see their way. Such persons, however, 
are very soon entangled in their own words, or they 
are oppressed by the earnest opinions of the people 
they meet. For to conduct an interview in the 
manner which they intend, would require them to 
have at command that courage and decision which 
they never attain without a long and miserly weigh- 
ing of consequences. 

Indolent persons are very apt to resort to inter- 



INTERVIEWS, 



95 



views ; for It saves them the trouble of thinking 
steadily, and of expressing themselves with pre- 
cision, which they are called upon to do, if they 
come to write about the subject. Now they cer- 
tainly may learn a great deal in a short time, and 
with very little trouble, by means of an interview ; 
but if they have to take up the position of an antago- 
oist, of a judge, or indeed any but that of a learner, 
then it is very unsafe to indulge in an interview, 
without having prepared themselves for it. 

To conduct an interview successfully, requires not 
only information and force of character, but also a 
certain intellectual readiness. People are so apt to 
think that there are but two ways in which a thing 
can terminate. They are ignorant of the number of 
combinations which even a few circumstances will 
admit of. And perhaps a proposal is made which 
they are totally unprepared for, and which they can- 
not deal with, from being unable to apprehend with 
sufficient quickness its main drift and consequences. 

There are cases where the persons meeting are 
upon no terms of equality respecting the interview ; 
where one of them has a great deal to maintain, and 
the other nothing to lose. Such an instance occurs 
in the case of a minister receiving a deputation. He 



q5 jsssays. 

has the interests of the public to maintain, and the 
intentions of the Government to keep concealed. 
He has to show that he fully understands the argu- 
ments laid before him ; and all the while to conceal 
his own bias, and to keep himself perfectly free 
from any pledge. Any member of the deputation 
may utter any thing that he pleases without much 
harm coming of it ; but every word that the min- 
ister says is liable to be interpreted against him to 
the uttermost. There are similar occasions in pri- 
vate life, where a man has to act upon the defen- 
sive, and where the interview may be considered 
not as a battle, but as a siege. A man should then 
confine himself to few words. He should bring 
forward his strongest arguments only, and not state 
too many of them at a time ; for he should keep a 
good force in reserve. Besides, it will be much 
more difficult for the other party to mystify and 
pervert a few arguments than a set speech. And 
he will leave them no room for gaining a semblance 
of victory by answering the unimportant parts of 
his statement. 

Again, whatever readiness and knowledge of the 
subject he may possess, he should have somebody 
by him on his side. For he is opposed to numbers, 
and must expect that amongst them there will 



INTERVIEWS. ^y 

always be some one ready to meet his arguments, if 
not with argument, at any rate with the proper 
fallacies ; or at least that there will be some one 
stupid enough to commence replying without an 
answer. He should therefore have a person who 
should be able to aid him in replying ; and there will 
be a satisfaction in having somebody in the room who 
is not in a hostile position towards him. Besides, 
he will want a witness ; for he must not imagine 
that the number of his opponents is any safeguard 
against misrepresentation, but rather a cause, in 
most people, of less attention and less feeling of 
responsibility. And, lastly, the most precise man in 
the world, if he speaks much on any matter, may 
be glad to hear what was the impression upon 
another person's mind ; in short, to see whether he 
conveyed exactly what he meant to convey. 

The best precaution, however, which any man 
can take under these circumstances, is to state in 
writing, at the conclusion of the interview, the sub- 
stance of what he apprehends to have been said, 
and of what he intends to do. This would require 
great readiness and the most earnest attention ; 
but in the end it would save very much trouble 
and misapprehension. A similar practice might be 
adopted in most interviews of business, where 
7 



o3 ESSAYS. 

the subject would warrant such a formality. It 
would not only be good in Itself, but Its Influ- 
ence would be felt thoughout the interview ; and 
people would come prepared, and would speak 
with precision, when there was an immediate 
prospect of their statements being recorded. 



3»iC 



OF COUNCILS, COMMISSIONS, 

AND, IN GENERAL, OF BODIES OF MEN CALLED 
TOGETHER TO COUNSEL OR TO DIRECT. 

OUCH bodies are the fly-wheels and safety-valves 
*^ of the machinery of business. They are 
sometimes looked upon as superfluities ; but by 
their means the motion is equalized, and a great 
force Is applied with little danger. 

They are apt contrivances for obtaining an aver- 
age of opinions, for insuring freedom from corruption, 
and the reputation of that freedom. On ordinary 
occasions they are more courageous than most indi- 
viduals. They can bear odium better. The world 
seldom looks to personal character as the predomi- 
nating cause of any of their doings, though this is 
one of the first things which occurs to it when the 



OF COUNCILS AND COMMISSIONS. qq, 

public acts of any individual are in question. The 
very indistinctness which belongs to their cor- 
porate existence adds a certain weight to their 
decisions. 

Councils are serviceable as affording some means 
of judging how things are likely to be generally 
received. It is seldom that any one person, how- 
ever capable he may be of framing or of executing 
a good measure, can come to a satisfactory con- 
clusion as to the various appearances which that 
measure will present, or can be made to present, to 
others. In some instances he may be so little 
under the influence of the common prejudices 
around him, as not to understand their force, and 
therefore not to perceive how a new thing will 
be received. Now, if he has the opportunity of 
consulting several persons together, he will not only 
have the advantage of their common sense and 
joint information, but he will also have a chance 
of hearing what will be the common nonsense of 
ordinary men upon the subject, and of providing 
as far as possible against it. 

On the other hand, these bodies are much 
tempted by the division of responsibility to sloth, 
and therefore to dealing with things superficially 
and inaccurately. Another evil is the want of 



lOO 



ESSAYS. 



that continuity of purpose in their proceedings 
which is to be found in those of an individual. 

As it tends directly to diminish many of the 
advantages before mentioned, it is, in general, a 
wrong thing for a member of a Council or Com- 
mission to let the outer world know that his 
private opinion is adverse to any of the decisions 
of his colleagues ; or indeed to indicate the part, 
whatever it may have been, that he has taken in 
the transaction of the general body. 

The proper number of persons to constitute such 
bodies must vary according to the purpose for 
which they are called together. Such a number 
as would afford any temptation for oratorical dis- 
play should in general be avoided. Another limit, 
which it may be prudent to adopt, is to have only 
so many members as to make it possible, in most 
cases, for each to take a part in the proceedings. 
By having a greater number, you will not insure 
more scrutiny into the business. It will still be 
done by a few ; but with a feeling of less responsi- 
bility than if they were left to themselves, and with 
the interruptions and inconvenience arising from 
the number of persons present. Besides, the greater 
the number, the more likelihood there is of parties 
being formed In the Council. 



OF COUNCILS AND COMMISSIONS. jqi 

Whether the members are many or few, there 
should be formahties, strictly maintained. This is 
essential in the conduct of business. Otherwise 
there will be such a state of things as that described 
by Pepys in his account of a meeting of the privy 
council ; which, like most of his descriptions, one 
feels to be true to the life. " We to a Committee 
of the Council to discourse concerning pressing of 
men ; but Lord ! how they meet ; never sit down : 
one comes, now another goes, then comes another ; 
one complaining that nothing is done, another 
swearing that he hath been there these two hours 
and nobody come. At last my Lord Annesley says, 
* I think we must be forced to get the King to come 
to every Committee ; for I do not see that we do 
any thing at any time but when he is here.* " 

The great art of making use of councils, com- 
missions, and such like bodies, is to know what 
kind of matter to put before them, and in what 
state to present it. " There be three parts of busi- 
ness, the preparation ; the debate, or examination ; 
and the perfection ; whereof, if you look for dis- 
patch, let the middle only be the work of many, 
and the first and last the work of few." * There is 
likely to be a great waste of time and labor when 

* Bacon's Essay on Dis-paick. 



I02 ESSAYS. 

a thing is brought in all its first vagueness to be 
debated or examined by a number of persons. And 
there will be much in the " preparation " and " per- 
fection " of a matter which will only become con- 
fused by being submitted to a full assembly. You 
might as well think of making love by a council or 
a board. It should therefore be the business of 
some one, either In the council or subordinate to it, 
to bring the matter forward in a distinct and definite 
shape. Othei-wise there will be a wilderness of 
things said before you arrive at any legitimate point 
of discussion. And hence Bacon adds, " The pro- 
ceeding upon somewhat conceived in writing doth 
for the most part facilitate dispatch ; for though it 
should be wholly rejected, yet that negative is more 
pregnant of direction than an indefinite, as ashes 
are more generative than dust." 

In order to bring the responsibility of any act of 
the general body home to the individuals composing 
it, no method seems so good as that of requiring the 
signatures of a large proportion of the council or 
commission to the directions given in the matter. 
Even the most careless people have a sort of aver- 
sion to signing things which they have never con- 
sidered. This plan is better than requiring the 



OF COUNCILS AND COMMISSIONS. 103 

signatures of the whole body. For it is less likely 
to degenerate into a mere formality ; and, besides, 
the other course would give any one crotchety man 
too great a power of hindrance. 

The responsibility, also, of those persons who 
settle the details of a matter, whether secretaries, 
or committees of the Council, should be clearly 
attested either by their signatures, or by a memo- 
randum, showing what part of the business had 
been entrusted to them. 

As to the kind of men to be especially chosen or 
rejected, it would be trifling to lay down any mi- 
nute rules. You often require a diversity of natures, 
in order that the various modes of acting congenial 
to different minds and tempers should have an 
opportunity of being canvassed. 

When a man's faults are those which come to the 
surface in social life, they must be noted as certain 
hindrances to his usefulness as a member of any of 
these bodies. A man may be proud or selfish, and 
yet a good councillor ; he may be secretly ill-tem- 
pered, and yet a reasonable man in his converse 
with the world, capable of bearing opposition, and 
an excellent coadjutor ; but if he is vain, or fond of 
disputes, or dictatorial, you know that his efficiency 
in a Council must to a certain extent be counteracted. 



104 ASSAYS. 

Those men are the grace and strength of Coun- 
cils who are of that healthful nature which is con- 
tent to take defeat with good humor, and of that 
practical turn of mind which makes them set 
heartily to work upon plans and propositions which 
have been originated in opposition to their judg- 
ment ; who are not anxious to shift responsibility 
upon others ; and who do not allude to their former 
objections with triumph, when those objections 
come to be borne out by the result. In acting 
with such persons you are at your ease. You 
counsel sincerely and boldly, and not with a tim- 
orous regard to your own part in the matter. 

The men who have method, and, as it were, a 
judicial intellect, are most valuable councillors. 
Without some such in a Council, a great deal of 
cleverness goes for nothing ; as there is nobody to 
see what has been stated and answered, to what 
their deliberations tend, and what progress has 
been made. Such persons can gather the sense of 
a mixed assembly, and suggest some line of action 
which may honestly meet the different views of the 
various members. They will bring back the sub- 
ject-matter when it has all but floated away, while 
the others have been looking for sea-weed, or throw- 
ing stones at one another on the shore. 



PARTY-SPIRIT, 105 



PARTY-SPIRIT. 

TDARTY-SPIRIT gives a pretext for the exercise 
of such scorn and malice as could not be tole- 
rated, if they did not claim to have their origin in 
fervent wishes for the public welfare. It consumes 
in idle contests that energy which the state has need 
of. By the perpetual interchange of hard names it 
tends to make a people suspicious and uncharitable ; 
or it inclines them to think lightly of the kind of 
offences which they hear so often charged against, 
their most eminent public men ; or it " gives them 
a habit of using epithets and affecting sensations 
of moral indignation which bear no proportion to 
the thing itself, or to their own real feelings about 
the thing ; of taking the names of Truth and Vir- 
tue in vain." 

Under the influence of party-spirit, a nation 
sometimes acts towards its dependencies, and in its 
foreign relations, not with the whole force of the 
country, but with a portion of it only, bearing some 
reference to the excess of strength in the ruling 
party. 

Party-spirit makes people abjure independent 
thinking. It can leave nothing alone. It must 



I06 ESSAYS. 

uplift a hand in eveiy man's quarrel, as a knight- 
errant of old, but with small sense of chivalry. It 
forces its odious friendship or its unprovoked hos- 
tility v^here neither is fitting. Even the wisest 
require to be constantly on their guard against it ; 
or its insidious prejudices, like dirt and insects on 
the glasses of a telescope, will blur the view, and 
make them see strange monsters where there are 
none. 

Party-spirit incites people to attack with rashness, 
and to defend without sincerity. Violent partisans 
are apt to treat a political opponent in such a man- 
ner, when they argue with him, as to make the 
question quite personal, as if he had been present, 
as it were, and a chief agent in all the crimes which 
they attribute to his party. Nor does the accused 
hesitate to take the matter upon himself, and, in 
fancied self-defence, to justify things which other- 
wise he would not hesitate, for one moment, to 
condemn. 

These evils must not be allowed to take shelter 
under the unfounded supposition that party dealings 
are different from any thing else in the world, and 
that they are to be governed by much looser laws 
than those which regulate any other human affairs. 



PARTY-SPIRIT. 



107 



It Is a very dangerous thing to acknowledge two 
sorts of truth, two kinds of charity. 

Is there no harm in never looking further than 
the worst motive that can possibly be imagined for 
the actions of our political adversaries ? Are we to 
consider the opposite party as so many Samaritans ; 
and is there nothing that we have ever heard or 
read, which should induce us to abate our Jewish 
antipathy to these brethren of ours who do not 
worship at our temple? This is an illustration 
from which political bigots cannot escape. Even 
their own pretensions of being always in the right 
will only bring the instance more home to them. 
The Jews were right about the matter in dispute 
between them and the Samaritans. " Salvation is 
with the Jews." But this is never held out to us as 
any justification of their behavior. 

To hear some men talk one would suppose that 
political distinctions were natural distinctions, and 
that they depended upon a man's personal qualities. 
These people seem to think that all the good are 
ranged in a row on one side, and all the bad on 
the other. Now the utmost that can reasonably be 
alleged is, that there exists in most men a predis- 
position to one or other of the two great parties 
which are to be found in every free country ; but 



I08 ESSAYS. 

this cannot be depended upon as the cause which 
determines men in general to attach themselves to 
a party. 

As it is, some range themselves on one side, and 
some on the other, just as they used to do in their 
school games, and with about as much reflection. 
A large number of persons, in all ranks, hold 
hereditary opinions. There are thousands who 
make their convictions on all political subjects 
subservient to their feelings as members of a class, 
and to what they believe to be the interests of that 
class. Then there are those who think whatever 
the little mob in which they live pleases to think ; 
and this is the most comfortable way of thinking. 
Direct self-interest decides some men. The merest 
accidents determine others. For instance, how 
much of a man's opinions through life will depend 
upon any strong-minded or earnest person that he 
may have lived with at a time when he was unin- 
formed himself and malleable. Remember, too, 
that it requires but a slight bias to send a man into 
a party ; for let him agree with it only in a few 
points, and he will be set down as belonging to it. 
Then, perhaps, he is called upon to act in some 
way or other politically, and a very little determines 
a man whose thoughts upon the subject altogether 



PARTY-SPIRIT. lOQ 

have been few and vague. Thus a political charac- 
ter is impressed upon him without his having had 
much to do in the matter; but afterwards many- 
things will probably occur to deepen that impres- 
sion, and to make him a decided partisan. 

A true analysis of the composition of parties 
would afford a good lesson of political tolerance. 
We should learn from it what a mixed thing a 
party is ; that there is no single law that will 
explain Its cohesion ; and still less is there any 
good ground for insisting that the distinctions 
of party have their origin in moral worth or 
turpitude. 

It Is of Importance that we should train ourselves 
to make the fitting allowance for the political pre- 
judices of others. 

Pascal asks, " Whence comes It to pass that we 
have so much patience with those who are maimed 
in body, and so little with those who are defective 
in mind ? " And he says, " It is because the cripple 
acknowledges that we have the use of our legs ,* 
whereas the fool obstinately maintains that we are 
the persons who halt in understanding. Without 
this difference in the case, neither object would 
move our resentment, but both our compassion." 
We might try to overlook this difference, and find 



jjQ ASSAYS. 

it an aid to charity to consider that men*s preju- 
dices are the same kind of things as their personal 
defects. Whether a man is laboring under some 
degree of physical deafness ; or under some strong 
prejudice, which, being ever by his side, is always 
sure of the first hearing, and produces a sort of 
numbness to any thing else, — it comes nearly to the 
same thing as regards the weight which he is likely 
to attach to any of our arguments, when adverse to 
his prejudice. In both cases the cause is decided 
without our being fully heard. 

But at the same time that we have recourse to 
such views as the above, to moderate our im- 
patience of other people's prejudices, we should 
keep a vigilant watch on our own. We often for- 
get that we are partisans ourselves, and that we are 
contending with partisans." We first give ourselves 
credit for a judicial impartiality in all that concerns 
public affairs ; and then call upon our opponents 
actually to be as impartial as we assert ourselves to 
be. But few of us, I suspect, have any right to 
take this high ground. Our passions master us ; 
and we know them to be our enemies. Our 
prejudices imprison us ; and, like madmen, we take 
our jailers for a guard of honor. 



PARTT-SPIRIT. Ill 

I do not mean to suggest that truth and right are 
always to be found in middle courses ; or that there 
is any thing particularly philosophic in concluding 
that " both parties are in the wrong," and " that 
there is a great deal to be said on both sides of the 
question," — phrases which may belong to indo- 
lence as well as to charity and candor. Let a man 
have a hearty strong opinion, and strive by all fair 
means to bring it into action, — if it is, in truth, an 
opinion, and not a thing inhaled like some infec- 
tious disorder. 

Many persons persuade themselves that the life 
and well-being of a state are something like their 
own fleeting health and brief prosperity. And 
hence they see portentous things in every subject of 
political dispute. Such fancies add much to the 
intolerance of party-spirit. But the state will bear 
much killing. It has outlived many generations of 
political prophets ; and it may survive the present 
ones. 

Divisions in a state are a necessary consequence 
of freedom ; and the practical question is not to 
dispense with party, but to make the most good of 
it. The contest must exist ; but it may have some- 
thing of generosity in it. And how is this to be } 



112 ASSAYS. 

Not by the better kind of men abstaining from any 
attention to politics, or shunning party connections 
altogether. Staying away from a danger, which in 
many instances it is their duty to face, would be but 
a poor way of keeping themselves safe. It would 
be a doubtful policy to encourage political indiffer- 
ence as a cure for the evils of party-spirit, even if 
it were a certain cure ; but we cannot take this for 
granted, especially when we observe that the vices 
of party are not always to be seen most in those 
who have the most earnest political feelings. 
Indeed, the attachment to a party may be, and often 
is, an affection of the most generous kind ; and 
it must, I think, be allowed, that even with men 
who do not discern the true end of party, nor its 
limits, party-spirit is often a rude kind of patriotism. 
The question, then, is how to regulate party- 
spirit. Like all other affections, its tendency is to 
overspread the whole character. One who has 
nothing in his soul to resist it, or much that assimi- 
lates with its worst influences, is carried away by 
it to evil. But a good man will show the earnest- 
ness of his attachment to his party by his endeavor 
to elevate its character; and in the utmost heat 
of party contests he will try to maintain a love of 
truth, and a regard for the charities of life. 



AN ESSAY ON 
ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



INTRODUCTION. 



/^N as bright a morn as a poet's marriage-day 
should be, I went with a landscape-painter to 
see the spot which he had chosen for a picture of 
some water-meadows. I wished to compare the 
picture with the original, and hoped to make some 
criticisms which might prove suggestive to the 
artist, and might not be deemed utterly irrelevant 
by him. I know that, in general, artists are wont 
to think the criticisms of the laity rather weak and 
superfluous. 

I admired my friend for having chosen as a subject 
for his picture one that might appear at first sight 
to be any thing but picturesque. But it would be 
iinpicturesque only to the man who had not yet 
learned to look earnestly and lovingly at Nature. 
The luxuriance and beauty of the water-weeds and 
of the bulrushes were wonderful, and would have 
given work to a Pre-Raffaelite for a year. The 
grass, lapped by the bright water in its narrow 
channels, shone with an emerald green. The cattle 



Il6 INTRODUCTION. 

browsed in rich contentment. A delicate, sheeny- 
mist, that quivered in the sunlight, was visible here 
and there in certain parts of the meadows. Silvery- 
looking insects darted hither and thither in the water- 
furrows. Altogether, it was a scene which, in its 
microscopic beauty, offered to the naturalist and 
the artist almost as much to com.ment upon and 
to delight in, as the vast expanse of the heavens, 
in its sublime and mystic aspect, offers to the 
rapt astronomer pondering on their illimitable 
grandeur. 

The meadows were skirted by a railroad ; and I 
was pleased to see that the artist had not shunned 
the railway, and had even had the audacity to intro- 
duce a train. 

Very soon, however, I am ashamed to say, I wan 
dered in thought from the picture, and began to 
compare in my mind the skilful workmanship of the 
water-meadows with that of the railway and the 
train. The water-meadows were an old invention ; 
but an invention, we must admit, of great merit. 
Pharoahs and Ptolemies, the Copt, the Babylonian, 
the Indian, the Moor, came before me as men who 
had adopted this skilful mode of multiplying the 
resources of the earth ; and, descending the laden 
stream of time, I thought of the vast works of for- 



INTB OD UCTION. 1 1 ^ 

gotten men who have labored to embank the 
Thames, and make it the serviceable river that it 
is to a great commercial nation. 

I then thought of the immense improvement 
which irrigation admits of, but could not say that it 
was greater than that which might be effected in 
railway ti-avelling. The truth is, that after the 
adoption of some great invention or discovery, there 
comes a lull in the exercise of human thought as 
applied to it. I then began to think that consum- 
mate organization is almost as rare a thing as high 
invention. And in some respects it is more diffi- 
cult, because it is more involved in the intricacies 
of human life and conduct. Agriculture, govern- 
ment, war, legislation, business, pleasure, passed 
before me in their different forms ; and I thought 
how all important was organization in each of 
these large branches of human endeavor. 

It was in vain that the careful artist took me here 
and there ; insisted upon my noticing this tint, and 
that shadow; and fell into ecstasies, to which I 
made but a poor response, about the loveliness of 
an old brick wall and a decayed wooden bridge. I 
had a thought that drove me like a goad ; and I was 
not happy till I could get home and begin my essay 
On organization. I found, as one always does, that 



1 1 8 INTR OB UCTION. 

any large subject stretches out into all subjects ; and 
that the difficulty is to reduce it into a presentable 
shape. I studied the men who were said to be skil- 
ful in organizing ; and the result of all my labor 
was the following essay — a work of slight preten- 
sion, but one which may serve to elict other disqui- 
sitions worthy of a subject so deep, various, and 
extensive, as organization. 



ON ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



'THHERE is not an individual in the commu- 
nity whom it does not much concern that 
there should be, amongst his fellow-countrymen, 
persons especially skilled in the art of organiza- importance 

of Organiza- 
tion. Half the labor of the most laborious tion. 

people in the world is either totally wasted, or 
is of such an imperfect character as to require 
much further labor ; which evils need not have 
been if there had existed considerable skill in 
organizing. Moreover, the destruction of life, 
the loss of comfort, the waste of time, and the 
withering-up of enjoyment, which take place 
from a want of this skill, are almost incalcu- 
lable. 

If we were to seek what would be the perfec- 
tion of organization in human affairs, we must 
turn to Nature, and see how she organizes; 
noticing how the cell contains in itself, poten- 
tially, all the powers of development towards 
perfection. And so, to a certain extent, might 



I20 ^N ESSAY ON 

the beginnings of human undertakings be fash- 
ioned. In fact, that amount of skill and thought 
should be brought to bear upon them which 
would insure, in future, the opportunity for full 
development. 

The field for organization is very wide indeed, 

as it embraces most human affairs. It is difficult 

to giv^e a precise definition of the term. If we 

Definition tum to Dr. Johusou, he tells us that an organiza- 

of Organiza- . 

tion. tion IS a " construction in which the parts are so 

disposed as to be subservient to each other.** 
And what we mean by a good organization is 
some construction in which the several parts are 
so deftly disposed, that, with the least expense 
of moral and material force, and in the shortest 
time, a given result is obtained. Take the sub- 
ject of locomotion, for instance. The private 
individual consults his guides, his handbooks, 
and his railway lists, and plans his journey. 
But those who are to organize the means of 
locomotion have to provide for thousands of 
these individual journeys, even for millions, and 
so to arrange the modes of transit that all the 
conflicting interests of private individuals shall 
be duly considered, and the public be fully and 
fairly served. This, in the long-run, will be 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 121 

found to coincide exactly with the interest of the 
body which has to organize locomotion. 

The foregoing remark leads to a part of the 
subject which I think has often escaped notice 
in all departments of organization ; namely, 
that the organism requires to be looked at from Organisms 
a point of view quite different from that which ^^ ^^^^ 
the organizers are likely at first to take. They without, 
sliould look at it from the point of view that the 
persons most concerned in, or rather acted upon 
by, the organism, are likely to- take. For in- 
stance, in the levying and collecting of taxes, 
the most skilful financier will be the one who 
can throw himself, by imagination, into the posi- 
tion of the persons who are liable to pay any 
particular tax. There have been vexatious Taxation 
imposts in this country, as profitless as vexa- 
tious, which, I am convinced, would never have 
been proposed, or at least would never have 
been adopted, if statesmen had attained by expe- 
rience, or by imagination, to an adequate notion 
of the inconvenience caused by these imposts. 
A similar assertion might be justly made with 
respect to the arrangements for railway travel- 
ling, and for many other forms of organization. 
The shrewdest railway director, the one who 



122 ^N ESSAY ON 

will bring most grist to the mill, will be that 
man who, in considering the railway, makes 
himself most thoroughly one of the public, and 
learns to appreciate all the peculiar conveniences 
Railway which each class travelling by the railway de- 
^^ ^* sires, and all the peculiar inconveniences which 
each class seel<:s to avoid. As he travels up and 
down the line, if he would only observe what it 
is that people want, and what it is that they dis- 
like, he would bring more useful knowledge to 
the Board than could be gained in any other 
way. The same thing applies to military or- 
ganization. The officer who looks at an army 
or a navy, only from an officer's point of view, 
will never know how to make the most of either 
army or navy. And, further, he must look 
beyond the organization in which he is included, 
and see how it is regarded from without. 

But, returning to railway affairs : throughout 
them there is a sad want of the organizing 
faculty. And yet what a reward there would 
be for the exercise of this faculty ! If there 
were one organizing mind amongst those who 
direct the proceedings of any great railway, it 
would devise plans of improvement that would 
inevitably be adopted by all the other railways. 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 123 

In almost all the details of railway management 
there is room, for large improvement. The 
stations are often skilful models of inconven- 
ience. The construction of the carriages admits 
of immense Improvement. Even in a matter 
apparently so trifling as color, much might be 
done that would avoid inconvenience and disas- 
ter. A dark color is used where it is desirable 
that there should be a light one ; and uniformity 
of color is chosen where there would be a mani- 
fest advantage in the use of variety. In these 
great concerns, where the comfort and safety 
of millions of people are concerned, nothing 
hardly is trifling ; and every thing that is done 
ought to be able to give a good account of Itself, 
and offer a ready explanation of why it is so 
done. Could we find a person highly gifted 
with a talent of organization, it would be a wise 
expenditure of money to offer that man many 
thousands of pounds, merely to tell us how he 
would regulate. If he had power, any one of the 
great railway thoroughfares of this most locomo- 
tive country. 

Organization, however, must always be very 
diflScult, because it requires in the organizer an 



124 ^"^ I^SSAY ON 

The qaaiities unusual combination of qualities. Ardor, fore- 
OriSzer. thought, and imagination are among the first 
qualities. And, as there is so much that Is com- 
plicated, disastrous, and inopportune, In human 
affairs, it is pre-eminently necessary that a man, 
to organize skilfully, should be very apprehen- 
sive. He who supposes that things will go well, 
or indeed that they will go at all, without careful 
preparation and constant urging, is unfitted for 
an organizer. At the same time there must be, 
coexisting with the foregoing high qualities, an 
unwearied Interest in details, and a power of 
massing them together, and of marshalling them 
as a general does his battalions. Then there 
must be a nice sense of proportion in a good 
organizer, for every thing goes by number and 
by weight. Besides, he must possess that tact 
and knowledge of the world which show a man 
how business of all kinds proceeds, and which 
are utterly different from any knowledge that Is 
to be got from books alone. For instance, no 
man, who has not sat In the assemblies of men, 
can know the light, odd, and uncertain ways in 
which decisions are often arrived at by those 
bodies. No man, who has not commanded, can 
appreciate how much even the most precise 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



125 



orders are likely to be disobeyed. No man, who 
has not had some practical dealings with man- 
kind, is aware how much explanation is neces- 
sary to make people really comprehend any 
thing, and how most persons will say that they 
understand what you tell them before they really 
do so. 

It is not necessary, however, for a good 
organizer to be a man of very large experience. 
It is astonishing how soon a shrewd man will 
make himself master of the foregoing results of 
experience, and of many like them, if he have 
any opportunity of seeing the world. To take 
a high example. Lord Bacon would not have 
needed to have attended many councils before 
he could write upon them in the admirable way 
that he has done ; but some he must have seen 
before he could so write. 

Everybody knows what great results may be Great results 
obtained by good organization ; but it is well to attempts at 
see, by the examination of details, how amply 9^"^^°"*' 
men are repaid for even a little expense of 
thought and time given to the methods of organ- 
izing. It is a well-known saying, and a very 
true one, that a bar of iron or a piece of timber 
is no stronger than it is at its weakest point. 



126 ^-^ ESS AT ON 

There is the point where, in real work, it wiL 
break ; and this general law holds good in many 
cases, and may be applied very largely. 

For instance, any arrangement for the recep- 
tion of crowds of people is likely to be deficient 
from a want of thought of where there will be a 
rush of numbers to a given point at a given 
time. Now, in organizing with a view to this 
point of difficulty, it is surprising what a reward 
there would be for any small expense of fore- 
thought and method. It is perhaps not too 
much to say, stating the matter scientifically, 
that the mass divided by four equals the difficulty 
divided by sixteen. 

Throughout this essay I shall not hesitate to 
take the most simple and commonplace exam- 
ples occurring in ordinary life, and familiar to 
many people. Abstract propositions are soon 
forgotten ; but these illustrations remain in the 
mind, and may be fairly tested. There was, 
some little time ago, near London, one of the 
largest assemblages of persons that has ever 
been known. Experienced coachmen declared, 
that in their lives they had never had such 
difficulties to overcome. After the entertain- 
ment was over, and when the assemblage was to 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 127 

disperse, many persons were kept three hours 

waitino^ for their carriao^es. There had not been 

the slightest attempt at organization. A per 

son of an organizing mind, who was present, 

remarked that three or four simple regulations 

would have obviated all the difficulty. I adduce The reward 

this instance solely with a view to show how .°^ J^,^°!^' 

J ing m a par- 

much reward there would have been for even a t'cui^r case 
little attempt at organization. He said, if this 
bewildering mass of vehicles had been separated 
into four divisions,* and placards had been put 
up stating the nature of these divisions, the 
difficulty would have been reduced to small 
dimensions. By this division several persons 
would soon have found their conveyances and 
made their way off, at each minute rendering 
the difficulty much less for the timid and the 
inexperienced. In such a case, it is probably 
no exaggeration to say that the division of the 
mass into four would have gone far to reduce 
the difficulty into a sixteenth part of its pro- 
portions. 

* Such, for instance, as, i, open carriages with two 
horses; 2, close carriages with two horses; 3, car- 
riages with one horse, not hired ; 4, carriages with 
one horse (such as cabs, &c.)j hired. 



128 ^-^ i:SSAT ON- 

TO return to more abstract propositions. The 

common defects of organization are, that it is 

too fixed ; that it leaves no room for growth ; 

that it is pedantic and unreasonably fond of 
Pedantic Tulcs ; and that it insists too much on qualifica- 
Organiia- ^^^^^^ -^j^^^ jg implied by that last word 

tion. ^ J 

"qualifications" maybe misunderstood without 
some explanation. It applies to a system 
adopted in all the departments of civil and 
military service, and also in many private 
undertakings. The moment that you fix a quali- 
fication, whether of age, of length of service, or 
of the possession of money, you do something 
which, at some time or other, will prevent your 
making choice of the best man. And, as far as 
I have been able to observe the effects of this 
qualification, its imposition has never produced 
such good results as to counterbalance the 
immense disadvantage of giving up freedom of 
choice amongst men. Take, for instance, the 
common case of a directorship in a railway 
company. If you say that a man, to be a di- 
rector, must have a certain sum of money 
invested in the stock of that railway company, 
and which has been invested for some time (for 
that I believe is a common rule), you reduce 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 129 

your chance of obtaining good men to an almost 
indefinite extent. There is always some reason Quaiifica- 
for these qualifications being adopted ; but I 
would maintain that it is never a sufficient rea- 
son. Observe it in this particular case. The 
qualification of holding a certain amount of 
railway stock is imposed with a view to secure 
the services of men who care greatly for the 
undertaking. We may see directly that this 
reason is not strong, for what is a large amount 
to one man is a small amount to another. More- 
over, when a man can do any thing well, and is 
intrusted to do it, he has generally an impulse 
to action which is as strong and as abiding 
as can be found amongst human motives, and 
which will even surpass the love of gain. 

Turning now to the qualification of age, we 
may notice that even the lower animals differ 
much in their resistance to the natural effects of Disqualifica- 
age. But human beings differ greatly more. *^°" ^^^®* 
Place a bar, as regards age, in the military, 
civil, or legal sei'vice, and you will have done 
something to cut yourself off from the use of 
the greatest men. 

The Austrian Monarchy would not have been 
restored, if it had fixed its limit of age in mili- 
9 



I20 ^-^ ESSAY ON 

tary commanders to eighty years. Great lumi- 
naries of the law — Mansfields, Stowells, Eldons, 
Lyndhursts, Sugdens, Broughams, Campbells — 
have shone with undiminished light at times of 
life when the minds of ordinary men are becom- 
ing somewhat dim. And, from a foolish limit 
being placed in America to legal service, their 
greatest law3'er, — Chancellor Kent, — had to 
retire into comparative obscurity at the early 
and immature age, for lawyers, of sixty years. 

A similar statement might be made in refer- 
ence to statesmen, diplomatists, and other civil 
servants ; and it is vei*y manifest, in the present 
day, that great age does not always imply much 
decadence of mental power. The real truth is, 
that the men who become eminent in any thing 
become so by native force. There is a great 
deal more vigor in them than in other men. 
And if you place a limit of age, you almost say, 
Let us be ruled by average people. 

Then, as regards placing a bar of disquali- 
fication on account of age at the other end of 
the career, — at the entrance into service, — we 
deprive ourselves, by so doing, of many of those 
men who, at a time of life when they know 
something of their own minds and their own 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



131 



qualifications, would be willing to enter a ser- 
vice, and who would, I am firmly convinced, 
be the ablest men in it. Why should not a man 
at twenty-four years of age be able to commence 
the career of a soldier or a sailor? A common 
delusion which tends to create and justify these 
disqualifications is, that most occupations are 
supposed to be so difficult to learn, that there 
must be a long training for them ; which is 
in many cases a total mistake. Aptitude is a 
general qualification. Poets, they say, must be 
born poets ; painters must be born painters. 
Inventors show the inventive faculty as children. 
Newton, as a child, constructed his windmill. 
But, for all the ordinary affairs of civil and 
military life, a certain general ability will 
enable a man to act and to succeed in many 
directions. Cardinal Richelieu had not gone 
through much military training, but perhaps he 
was the fittest man in France to direct the siege 
of Rochelle. 

One of the great difficulties as regards organ- 
ization in practical life, is, that the ground is 
hardly ever clear ; and that pedants, and men 
who are dominated by mere neatness and com- 



132 



AN ESSAY ON 



pleteness of planning, will not recognize this 
fact. 

Some metaphysicians have compared the mind 
of a child to a piece of blank paper upon which 
any thing might be inscribed. But this is a very 
inadequate similitude. A better one, perhaps, 
would have been found in comparing the mind 
of a child to land yet uncultivated, and of which 
the cultivation must vary according to the na- 
Rareiyis ture of the land. But, however this may be, 

there clear - , . . i i . t 

ground for there are very few things, with which organiza- 
^0^°"^' ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ deal, which can be compared in 
blankness to a sheet of white paper; and so 
organization is, for the most part, a patching, 
mending, correcting, or adapting. A new col- 
ony affords something which at first appears 
clear ground. But it is not so. There is the 
peculiar nature of the territory, of the adjacent 
neighbors, and of the colonists themselves, with 
all their old-world ways, habits, and prejudices. 
In short, in real life you rarely have to organ- 
ize from the beginning, but rather to take up 
organization at a certain point of its progress. 
Hence the failure of constitution-mongers like 
the Abb4 Sieyes, who are sublimely indifferent 
to the state of facts around them. To use a 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



33 



witty expression of Charles II., they will not 
see that " nothing more can be done in the mat- 
ter than is possible." Another branch of this 
error, and a very important one, is, that plans 
are often organized to embrace the settled and 
the past, which can only have a chance of suc- 
ceeding by being limited, in the first instance, to 
the unformed and the future. I will again take 
a very familiar example from daily life. Our 
great towns, London especially, are perhaps 
more wonderful and complicated underground 
than aboveground. An admirable suggestion 
has been made of late years by the Times, so to 
arrange all this underground apparatus that it 
should be easily got at, — that there should not 
be this perpetual occasion for disturbing the 
pavements. All the influence of that powerful 
new'spaper has not succeeded in gaining for this 
plan the attention which it deserves. And it is 
one of those plans which will not have much 
chance of success until it is brought into opera- 
tion in new ground, unbuilt upon. Thence the 
system may spread. But the difficulties it will 
have to meet, in dealing w^ith that which is 
already settled and built upon, are so strong 
that it is nearly certain to be stifled by them. 



134 ^^ ESSAY ON 

The end not Another great cause of the failure of organi- 
SnT/^ zation is that the end proposed is not sufficiently 
stated at the outset. People have not asked 
themselves, at least in any detail, what they 
really want. Accordingly, some easy portion 
of the project is begun at once, and great part 
of what is then done proves a hindrance to a 
good plan being completely executed hereafter. 
It would not be a bad mode of preparing to 
organize any thing, to state in writing what 
would be the perfection of the plan if it could 
be carried out ; and then, by degrees, taking 
into consideration all the difficulties that occur, 
to fine down the project and bring it within the 
exact limits of what is practicable. But, at 
first, let there be a statement of what is wanted 
in the fullest acceptation of the words, — what 
you would have if you were all-powerful in the 
matter. To lay down this kind of plan requires 
a great deal of forethought and imagination ; 
but it would be well bestowed. England is 
arming now to prevent foreign invasion ; yet 
few, perhaps, even of governing people, have 
quite determined in their own minds what they 
want, — what they would like to have in the way 
Defences, of defences, if time and money were in abun- 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 135 

dance at their disposal; and have then seen 
how much of the essence of the best plan in 
theory can be obtained in practice by the means 
which they are likely to have at their command. 
As things go on in the world, great efforts will 
be made in a scattered, uncomprehensive, and 
unbusiness-like way ; and probably one-third of 
the force brought to bear upon this object will 
be lost. 

At the present moment, what is wanted for To Organize 

^ , a policy. 

England, in her dealings with foreign nations, is 

to organize a policy, and then to prepare the 
moral and material forces necessary to sustain 
that policy. Doubtless this is a considerable 
difficulty for any country not despotically gov- 
erned ; since one of the drawbacks upon the 
representative form of government lies in the 
frequent changes which take place in the 
governing persons, — changes, too, which often 
have their origin in very slight questions, and 
are not connected with any great change of 
policy, especially as regards foreign affairs. 
Still, these changes in the governing persons 
may be very detrimental, if only in creating the 
idea abroad of a proneness to mutability in our 
foreign policy. If England ever undergoes any 



136 



AN ESSAY ON 



deplorable reverse, it will probably be for want 
of preparedness, from deficiency in organization 
generally, and from the want of an organized 
plan of policy steadily pursued and prepared 
for. A further danger, is, that one kind of 
policy should be adopted in ordinary times, and 
then be suddenly changed at a crisis when there 
are no preparations made to sustain and enforce 
the new policy, and when the old preparations 
are unserviceable. Indeed, a large part of the 
preparations of mankind, even in the most 
civilized countries, are like those which are 
made in Thibet for the Great Lama festival 
called the Feast of Flowers, held at the Lama- 
serai of Kounboum. There are colossal statues 
of men and women, exquisitely wrought models 
of birds, animals, and even buildings ; and, in 
fine, there are decorations of the most elaborate 
and artistic kind. But they are all made of 
butter; and, though they have been labored at 
for months, they serve only for one day*s festival, 
and are then thrown down into a ravine near 
the Lamaserai, to be devoured by crows. 
The German The German Confederation is a notable iti- 

Confedera- . . 

tion. stance of imperfect organization ; and at a 

period when, if well organized, it might 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



137 



almost reassure Europe of tranquillity, it is 
chiefly useful as affording a world-wide example 
of an ineffectual adaptation of very powerful 
means to the ends for which they were in- 
tended. 

This brings us naturally to the consideration 
of whether certain people and certain forms of 
government are particularly apt at organization. 
Much misapprehension, I believe, prevails upon 
this point. It is said, for example, that the Comparison 
French are very clever at organization, and that French and 
the English are not. Before this statement J'^"^^^"!" ^ 

^ Organizers. 

could be verified, many questions would have 
to be decided. It would perhaps be found that 
the French are best at those forms of organ- 
ization which are of a particularly definite and 
precise kind, and which are very liable to failure 
from being too regulative and pedantic. I think 
it may be observed that Frenchmen cannot 
readily conceive a rapid change of plan, and 
are somewhat disconcerted by it ; whereas, on 
the contrary, the Englishman, being less a slave 
to logic and to precision of all kinds, succeeds 
in sgme matters which especially require fluency 
of nature. The British are perhaps the most 
versatile people in the world. This will appear 



138 



AN- ESSAY ON 



an extraordinary epithet to apply to them ; but 
they have shown great versatihty. The Amer- 
icans, who have taken many qualities from the 
British, are remarkable for versatility (using 
the word in a good sense). Again, it is the 
Anglo-Saxon race who have everywhere been 
the best colonists, which surely shows a great 
facility in their nature for adapting themselves 
to varying circumstances. 

Organizing Then, if wc consider the different powers 

powers of 

despotism, of organization inherent in different forms of 
government, we must admit that despotism not 
only possesses peculiar powers of organizing, 
but that all it creates has a certain resemblance 
to itself, and has an appearance and even a real- 
ity of order and precision, which are likely to 
be wanting in free governm'^nts. But then the 
question comes, Are these organizations that 
proceed from despotisms as generative and as 
adaptable to circumstances as the organizations 
under free governments are found to be.'* which 
certainly do not look so well on paper, and are 
often loosely and irregularly formed, but v^ich 
can walk alone, and do not always require the 
go-cart of Government. However, as it must 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 139 

be admitted that, for a given time and for 
matters which are entirely under their own reg- 
ulation, the organizations effected by despotic . 
governments are likely to be more brilliant and 
serviceable than those of free governments, it 
especially behooves free nations to study and 
contrive that their freedom should hinder as 
little as possible their efforts at organization 
in matters that deeply concern their safety. 

Of the different branches of organization, no o^'saniza- 

^ ' tioa of 

one is more important than the organization of labor. 

labor. This phrase is not used in any social 

sense, but in the humbler one of the direction 

of labor. I will take a very simple instance 

from rural life. There shall be a number of 

laborers employed in getting up a hayrick. A Work in a 

hayfield* 
man of an organizing mind will enter the field, 

and, after watching the work for a little time, 

will discern how much labor is lost, and what 

remedy should be adopted to prevent that loss. 

Some laborers are at times standing idle in 

the field, while others cannot overtake the work 

allotted to them. This organizer will so dispose 

the laborers, and so arrange the whole mode 

of transit, as to produce an increase of thirty 



140 AN ESSAY ON 

per cent in the work done. It will be said this 
is a very simple thing, a mere matter of arrange- 
ment, which anybody might do. But the 
remark is a ludicrous one. There have been 
many persons in the field all day long, some 
.of them more interested in the result, perhaps, 
than the man who has a talent for organization, 
and who improves all the arrangements as soon 
as he sees them. It is of no use saying that 
tlie matter is easy, and that anybody would see 
what was going wrong. The laborers did not 
see it, — for aught we know they would never 
have seen it; or, seeing it, would not have 
known what remedy to propose. All good 
organization tends to simplicity; and, when 
a wise method is proposed, people are ready to 
say how self-evident it is. But, without the few 
men who perceive these self-evident things, 
the business of the world would go on even 
worse than it does. 

If we wished to look for a notable instance of 

good organization, we could not readily find a 
A Roman /• t-» 1 • 

camp. better one than the camp of a Roman legion. 

The form of the camp, the position of the 

general's quarters, the space between the tents 

and the ramparts, and the respective stations for 



ORGANIZATION- IN DAILY LIFE. 141 

the infantry, the cavalry, arid the auxih'aries, 
were all settled points. Every soldier had a 
complete idea of w^hat was to be done, and 
what was to be his part in doing it. The 
advantage of such a system is too manifest to 
require any comment. A Roman camp must 
have been formed, or broken up, with a celerity 
unknown in modern times ; and those precious 
half-hours, on which the fate of armies may 
depend, must often have been gained by a 
determined pre-arrangement of the exact 
work to be accomplished in this one par- 
ticular. 

Another instance of good organization was 
afforded by the uniformity of arrangement 
which prevailed in the laying out of any new 

New to'.vns 

town in the Spanish possessions in America, in the 
There was always to be a large square. In that ^l^^^^^^^ 
square was to be the governor's palace. The 
extent of ground allowed to each inhabitant 
for the building of his house was generally a 
settled quantity ; and, altogether, the arrange- 
ments were such as enabled every individual 
to understand what was the idea to be ful- 
filled, and consequently the work to be 
done. 



1^2 ^iV ESSAY ON- 

The merits of good organization, and the 
demerits of the contrary, are singularly mani- 
fested in those enterprises which we call joint- 
stock undertakings. The first point to be urged 
is, that this form of enterprise should rarely be 
adopted except when it is absolutely needful. 
In some cases, such as insurance, it is absolutely 
needful. If the government of a country will 
not undertake insurance, joint-stock companies 
must do so. In the management of those con- 
cerns a board of directors is chosen, for two or 
three important reasons. First, to prevent 
jobbing. That is an ugly and unpleasant 
word, but there is none other that so well 
expresses what is meant. Secondly, to divide 
Joint-stock ^^"^^^^^""^ amongst many persons. It would be a 
enterprises, yery awkward thing, for instance, for an indi- 
vidual to decline to accept the life of another 
for insurance ; but a board of directors easily un- 
dertakes that unpleasant responsibility. Thirdly, 
to represent divers interests. Fourthly, to obtain 
the opinions of various persons, and so to gain 
collective wisdom. These benefits must be 
attained at some sacrifice of that force which is 
always to be found in the government of a single 
individual. Indeed, so serviceable are the prompt 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. ^^^ 

ness, the speed, the directness, and the compara- 
tive invariability belonging to individual action, 
that individuals often obtain a fatal sway in 
these joint-stock undertakings ; or, if not a fatal 
sway, a fatal power of malversation. And so, 
in great measure, the first object of these joint- 
stock undertakings may be frustrated. If we 
look into the remarkable frauds which have Frauds, 
occurred in joint-stock companies, we shall find 
that they have been perpetrated with long im- 
punity in consequence of neglect on the part of 
the governing body in some very simple matter ; 
that neglect being produced by the carelessness 
incident to divided responsibility. It is not 
exactly that excessive trust has been placed in 
an individual respecting those matters which he 
W9S especially fitted to transact. It is not that 
a skilful traffic-manager has been suffered to be 
too despotic in matters of traffic. It is not 
that the plans of an accomplished actuary, or 
of a wise general manager, have been listened 
to with overmuch credulity. But it is that some 
matter of routine has been blindly and amaz- 
ingly neglected. This might, in some measure, 
be obviated by a judicious division of labor 
amongst the governing botiy. The Government 



I^ AN ESSAY ON 

commission, which of all that we have known 
worked the best, was composed of a few indi- 
viduals possessing very different qualifications, 
each of whom took under his especial care 
Division of One branch of the administration, for which 
CTeatesre- ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ more responsible than any 
sponsibi''*". Qf ^\-^q other Commissioners. In any case of the 
least difficulty or peculiarity arising in any 
department of the business, the commissioner to 
whom the difficulty first came, as belonging 
to his particular work, submitted the matter 
to his colleagues. All the commissioners had 
a good general knowledge of the business of 
the office ; but, without any formal division 
of the business, they had come to an under- 
standing that particular branches were under 
the especial survey of certain members of their 
body, who had shown the greatest aptitude 
for managing those branches ; and, accordingly, 
they threw into their work some of the energy 
and responsibility which they would have mani- 
fested in their private affairs, or in any matter 
where they were, practically, supreme. With 
reference to the division of labor, we know ot 
an instance in a joint-stock body, where one 
of the governing persons, an old gentleman 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 145 

(" confidence is a plant of slow growth in aged 
bosoms," as Lord Chatham said), solely busied 
himself in asking for important vouchers. If 
stock was bought, he was sure to demand and 
to inspect the vouchers for the purchase. He 
probably felt that he was not a very skilful 
person in deciding upon difficult questions ; 
but he had a sort of watch-dog carefulness ; and 
of that he was resolved to make an unfailing 
use in behalf of the great interests partially 
committed to his care. It is almost a droll thing 
to observe that those officers upon whom the 
stability of a great concern may depend, namely, 
the auditors, are often made but little of, are 
paid very small amounts for their services, and 
are treated as if their functions were little 
more than unmeaning formalities. 

There are several general principles not some gen- 

hitherto mentioned, which must have a place in ^J^^J"°^^* 

any fitting discussion about organization. For 

instance, there is this one, — that all complicated 

machinery is likely to break down in times of 

hurry and pressure. Another is, that divided 

responsibility is sure to lead to confusion and 

disaster. A third is, that all systems tend to a 
10 



1^6 ^N ESSAY CN 

certain kind of crystallization : the system be- 
comes, in the minds of those who adopt it and 
are bred under it, the result, instead of being 
the means of getting at the result. Hence men 
become the slaves of routine. Now, routine is 
not organization, any more than paralysis is 
order. These and the like considerations are 
the morals and metaphysics of organization, 
which depend on the nature and habits of men's 
minds. There are others in which a mixture of 
material and moral considerations enters. For 
example, the question of what work shall be 
done by contract is a question that ought to be 
settled at an early stage of the organization of 
various transactions undertaken both by indi- 
viduals and nations. There are some kinds of 
work which I have no doubt may be prudently 
contracted for. There are others which you can 
no more contract for than you can contract for a 
fine poem or a good essay. Any one who is 
skilled in organization would endeavor to make 
up his mind soon as to what could, and what 
could not, be done by contract. 



There is probably no branch of human work 

The building ^ "^ 

of houses, in which mal-organization, or non-organization, 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 1^7 

is more visible than in building. Here, loo, it 
will be found that several primary considera- 
tions have never been settled. Ask an ordinary 
builder what thickness of what material is requi- 
site to keep out noise, and you will find it is a 
question which he has never considered. Yet, 
surely, it is one of the first necessity. Then, 
again, in building, it seems never to have been 
considered that families differ in number ; and, 
accordingly, wilfully ignoring this consideration, 
great contractors take large plots of ground, and 
cover them with exactly similar houses, which 
are perhaps equally unsuitable to large and to 
small families. The buildings, however, look 
all alike outside, which is held to be a most 
attractive circumstance. They are turned out 
something like the toys for children. Yet, 
surely, even as far as gain is concerned, greater 
profit would inevitably follow^ greater conven- 
ience. Nowhere is routine more observable 
than in building. Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tagu, when she revisited England after being in 
the East, observed that everybody's reception- 
rooms seemed to be constructed after the fashion 
of a grand piano-forte ; and the piano-forte style 
has held its ground ever since, though very little 



148 



AN ESSAY ON 



can be said for its merits. Again, one would 
have imagined that climate would be much con- 
sidered by architects and builders, whereas they 
often seem to think it a slight matter ; and 
houses ai-fe constructed after the same pattern, 
for wet and dry, for cloudless and beclouded 
districts. Occasionally amongst primitive peo- 
ple, these manifest realities are thought of and 
allowed for; but, when you come to highly 
civilized communities (which ought, by the way, 
to furnish the best builders), buildings are turned 
out for the most part in a set pattern, and that 
a bad one. 

There are not many undertakings which 
afford a better example of want of organization 
than the public buildings of a certain great and 
free country. In them is to be seen what it is to 
work upon disjointed plans, under different sets 
of masters, and with no pervading purpose or 
design. But, as it has just been said, building 
is one of the most fertile subjects for exemplify- 
ing all the merits of organization and all the 
demerits of its opposite. Very rare, indeed, is 
it to meet with a well-constructed house, even 
in a country like England, which is rich in all 
the means and appliances for building. It 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



149 



always seems as if an ordinary house had been 
constructed with a view to the future employ- 
ment of workmen, in reparation, renewal, and 
reconstruction. Of course all that part of this 
labor which might have been avoided is so 
much national loss. One of the great defects 
in house-building, is, that houses are so con- 
structed as to be a mystery even to their owners. 
Very important parts of the building, or rather 
of the adjuncts to the building, are buried in 
brickwork, concealed under woodwork, and 
made as complicated as possible ; so that, when 
a disaster occurs in a house, such as a sudden 
overflow of water, not one of the occupants 
knows where the disaster arises, or has more 
than a guess at what has happened. There is 
seldom any preparation for extremes of weather ; 
and when a frost breaks up, there is generally a 
damage of property in such a city as London, 
which it takes many thousands of pounds to 
repair. Much of this need for reparation occurs 
from an unwise parsimony at the outset ; and 
much also from a want of knowledge of the 
nature of the materials for house-building. 
Then, again, the various artisans employed in 
the construction of houses have no feeling for 



I50 



AN ESSAY ON 



each other's work, and there is a want of unity 
of purpose in their workmanship. Moreover, 
the house is constructed to be sold or to be let, 
but not to be lived in. 

Another instance of mal-organization is to be 
found in many municipal institutions. In this 
Municipal ^S^' ^^o^to^ there is much objection to centrali- 
institutions. zation, municipal institutions have fallen into a 
certain disrepute ; whereas they always afford 
great opportunities for usefulness and adminis- 
trative skill. Many a man is ambitious of 
getting into Parliament and doing something 
useful there, who, having obtained his seat, 
finds himself powerless in that assembly. The 
same man, however, might have been a great 
light in a municipal council* And it is by such 
instances of misdirected energy that mal-organi- 
zation often arises ; a large department of admin- 
istrative business being thus left to the misman- 
agement of merely fussy and pretentious people. 

To proceed to another branch of organization 
— that of intellectual labor — such as the con- 
struction of a public department. How little 
Public de- g]^jjj jg often shown in its organization. It 

partments 

seems often to be forgotten what is the work to 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. i^i 

be done ; and should there come a change or 
an increase of work, there is next to no power 
of adaptation to meet it. It was a very remark- 
able confession of Sir Robert Peel, on a certain 
occasion, that work which he would have liked 
to have had done, and which he apparently 
thought ought to have been done by Govern- 
ment, could not be effected by the force he had 
at his command in the public offices. And yet 
there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of 
intelligent men, who could have assisted the 
minister ; but there were no easy ways of get- 
ting at them. In such a conjuncture, a despot- 
ism would triumph ; for it would insist upon 
having its men to do its work. 

Parsimony is often a great hindrance to good Parsimony a 
organization. There is work to be done which '^'^'^^* 
requires fourteen persons to do it, and it may be 
absolutely mischievous to employ only nine. 
The thing is attempted to be done, and is not 
done ; and the plan which is sought to be 
carried out obtains the ill-reputation of being 
impracticable, simply because adequate means 
have not been provided to bring it into practice. 
It has been demanded from a pony to do the 
work of a dray-horse. 



ir2 -4iV £SSAY ON 

Government The Organization of government must ever 
be a most interesting and important form of 
organization ; and it is necessary that it should 
be peculiarly good and skilful among a free peo- 
ple, w^here the difficulties to contend against are 
very great 

Legislation. If we look at the organization for legislation 
in the foremost constitutional government that 
exists in the world, our own, the arrangements 
will be found to be deplorably defective. When 
a bill is introduced into the House of Commons, 
no mortal can tell what will become of it ; and 
sometimes its fate seems to have no reference 
whatever to its merits. It may be a curious 
instance of the association of ideas ; but, in con- 
templating our mode of legislation, I am some- 
what oddly reminded of a story told by some 
missionary a long time ago. He was amongst 
a black and savage people, and had prospered 
with them very well, until he began to teach 
them the doctrine of original sin. Somehow or 
other they construed his teaching of this doc- 
trine into a personal affi'ont. They assembled 
together ; instituted a war festival ; and, dancing 
round the unfortunate missionary, darted in 
upon him with fierce and threatening gestures, 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. j^^^ 

exclaiming, " Black man, is he a bad man ? 
black man a bad man ? " Whether the mission- 
ary escaped with life, or the story is told by 
some brother missionary, I do not remember ; 
but perhaps he might have been saved if there 
were a feast to the moon, or to some sacred 
animal or bird, to be celebrated, which took off 
the attention of the savages. I suppose the 
reason why this story occurs to me in thinking 
of legislation is, that in both cases the meaning 
of the two principal persons, the missionary 
and the minister in Parliament, is equally mis- 
conceived and misrepresented, and the result 
entirely left to terror or to chance. 

But, seriously speaking, it cannot be too 
earnestly impressed upon a free nation, that 
something like method of procedure and skill in 
organization should exist in its modes of legisla- 
tion, if it wishes to conciliate respect for consti- 
tutional government, and to insure good working 
for that government. A longing eye would 
never be turned, even for a moment, by any 
sensible person, to despotism, if free govern- 
ments possessed only moderate skill in legisla- 
tion ; and if great reforms were not hindered by 
that exhibition of freedom which takes the form 



1^4 AN ESSAY ON 

of noise, nonsense, and expense, and allows too 
much force to mere obstructiveness. It is a 
great grievance to the subject of any state, when 
private legislation, in matters that might be very- 
beneficial to him, is made so tedious and expen- 
sive as to discourage enterprise, and hinder 
some of the best uses of property. 

But it is perhaps at the centre of affairs that 
skilful reorganization is chiefly required. As it 
Statesmen is, we are governed by men whose time and 
Sr timT^^ attention are so much occupied by all manner of 
details and claims upon them of all kinds, that 
they must look upon everybody who approaches 
them as a bore to be got rid of. If the wisest 
man in the world wished to submit to a British 
minister the best suggestion of a fruitful brain, 
and if he succeeded in working his way to an 
interview with the minister, the probability is 
that the great functionary's pervading thought 
would be, " How soon shall I get rid of this 
" man.? how much of my time will he occupy .f*" 

When men perceive this, their communications 
inevitably become poor and inadequate. They 
feel that they will not have the requisite attention 
from this overburdened and preoccupied person, 
whom they have made such efforts to see : their 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. i^^ 

explanations become confused ; and their most 
judicious remarks occur to them as they are 
going down the staircase, having left the minis- 
ter's room. But this is not all. If it were only 
suggesters, improvers, and inventors, that could 
not get a sufficient hearing, though great loss 
might occur to the public service on many criti- 
cal occasions, the business of government might, 
substantially, be well conducted. But the fact is 
(and I appeal to persons of experience whether 
it is not a fact) that subordinates can hardly 
expect to obtain the requisite attention, even 
when the minister is most willing, and most 
industrious. Now this want of time on the part 
of high official personages is a very important 
subject for consideration, and will become more 
so as civilization advances. Then, again, as 
education advances in a country, as there are 
more people who can read and write, there will 
be more correspondence by letters. And when, 
as in the case of Great Britain, this increase of 
education coincides with great increase of popu- 
lation, and with a great increase of industry and constant 
of the outlets for industry, the claims upon a increase of 

the claims 

minister's time must also be largely increased, on a 

minister's 

As an instance of what I mean, it is no further time. 



156 



AN ES3AT ON 



back than the last four or five years that a new 
colony of the highest promise has arisen. I 
allude to British Columbia. There is not a 
department of government to which this colony 
will not bring additional business. 

Now where is the remedy to be found for 

this increasing difficulty? It is only to be found 

^c ^2°^ ^^ ^ better organization of the Cabinet Council 

itself, and of the several departments over 

which individual ministers preside. 

Again, to meet this increase of business, 

Legislative much considerateness is needed in legislative 
assemblies. , . . , 

assemblages. They must make up their mmds 

what they should do, and what they should not 
do. The more power they have, the more care 
they should take to avoid injudicious inter- 
ference with the Executive, unless indeed they 
are prepared to sit all the year round, and to 
manage all the business of the country them- 
selves, considering the ministers as merely the 
head clerks of departments. 
How to in- For the improvement of these departments 
Sden^^of ^^^^^^ things are necessary. First, that there 
departments, ghould be more intellectual strength in them. 
Secondly, that the persons having this strength 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 1^7 

should not be too much confined to official life, 
but should have much communication with 
the outer world. Thirdly, that these same 
persons should have some access to the legisla- 
tive assembly. When Pitt had to fight a bill 
in Parliament, he first shut himself up with 
the bill, and with those who could give him in- 
formation about it, until he had mastered every 
detail. And thus should every bill be dealt with. 
The man who introduces it should know it, and» 
all its bearings, as a successful aspirant for 
honors at a university knows any of the books 
he takes up for examination. As it is, the legis- 
lation emanating from any department is often 
too extensive for the minister at the head of the 
department to master all of it thoroughly ,* and 
the person who could introduce any particular 
bill, doing it full justice, has no means of 
getting a hearing. He listens patiently, or im- 
patiently, while his measure is foolishly attacked, 
or feebly defended, in Parliament. This, of 
course, chiefly takes place with respect to what 
are called minor measures ; but which may 
nevertheless have great influence for good or 
ill upon the public. 
The three objects above named might be 



158 



AN ESSAY ON 



easily attained if people were once aware of the 
importance of them. But as nothing more 
easily escapes attention than indifferent work- 
manship in intellectual matters, it is probable 
that a remedy will never be provided ; at least 
not until some great disaster shall have 
happened, or until some man of genius, who 
has attained political power, turns his attention 
to the improvement of the public departments, 
#nd makes that one of the chief objects of 
his life. 

There is anotner great branch of human 
endeavor, indeed the greatest, in which organ- 
ization is especially necessary ; and that is the 
Works of administration of charity. The French are said 

charity. 

to be especially skilful in this matter. I shall 
merely illustrate this part of the subject by an 
example, happily of rare occurrence, in which 
organization is every thing ; and that is the 
relief of famine. The number of things to be 
skilfully provided for in such a case is great, 
and the questions to be settled very embarrassing. 
What kind of food is best ; what kind of food 
is especially portable ; what kind of food will 
combine best with what little of other food is 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. i^^ 

left in the starving district ; what mode of trans- 

, - , ^^ J ^ A famine. 

port IS best fitted to convey supphes to the 
district ; v^hat mode of circulation vs^ithin this 
district is most feasible ; where the main depot 
should be placed ; where the subsidiary depots 
should be situated ; what strength is still left 
in the people for journeys to the place where 
food is to be obtained ; how the strong should 
be prevented from crushing the weak ; and 
how all should be encouraged and set to work, 
— are no light difficulties. There has been 
one man in our generation who has been great 
on this subject ; and it will be in the recollec- 
tion of many official men how well that man 
performed his work. One hundred thousand 
pounds intrusted to him would go as far as 
double the sum . dealt with in a slatternly and 
unsystematic manner. A similar kind of skill 
is required for all great works of charity. 

If we pursue the question of organization 
into several departments where so fine a word is 
seldom used for the thing to be done, but where 
the benefits of good organization would be very 
manifest, we shall find that it is often greatly 
neglected. Take for example the organization organization 
for teaching. How sadly deficient are diction- ^°'^^®**^*^* 



l5o ^^ ESSAY ON 

aries, grammars, recipe-books, indexes, notes, 
and commentaries. In looking around him at 
the great accumulations of knowledge, which he 
supposes to be stored up in books, the unprac- 
tised student thinks he will be able to find out 
every thing he can want to know. At a later 
period it is with a heavy heart that he sets to 
work to make any research in any subject. It is 
not that there have not been many people who 
have known a great deal of the subjects they 
have undertaken to write about ; but they have 
not conveyed their knowledge with method or 
precision : often they have not seemed to know 
what it is that other people would stumble over ; 
and, worst of all, they have almost invariably 
presumed that the persons for whose benefit they 
were writing did not require much instruction, 
but were already very well informed ; whereas, 
there is no depth or density of ignorance which 
might not more reasonably have been taken for 
granted. Unfortunately, however, as soon as 
anybody knows any thing well himself, he seems 
to be so far removed from other people's igno- 
rance as to be unable to make any due allowance 
for it. I shall turn again to a familiar instance. 
An animal is suddenly taken ill. The person 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. i5i 

who in such cases should be called in is not to 
be found. Indeed, there are very few of such 
persons. Recourse is had to books. Books on 
the subject are abundant. You are very fortu- 
nate in such a case if the symptoms are so 
clearly defined in the book you consult as to 
enable you to recognize the disease. Then 
comes the remedy, which perhaps runs in this 
sort of phraseology : " Dissolve a little some- 
thing in something else." This is not precise 
enough for your purpose ; and you turn to 
another work, where, alas ! you find only a vari- 
ation of the former words : " Dissolve a bit of 
something in a little of something else." Not a 
word is given in either prescription of the 
quantities to be used. You are then told to 
trim a feather neatly, and with it to apply the 
medicament. What a mass of vagueness it all 
is! "A feather!" What feather? "Trimming 
neatly ! " What is meant by trimming neatly } 
Altogether it seems as if you were almost 
mocked by the incompleteness of these direc- 
tions ; which, to be of swift utility, should have 
been given with the utmost preciseness.* 

* I need hardly say that I am taking an instance 

from real life. The disorder was one affecting the 

trachea. 

zi 



1 62 AN £SSAT ON 

What has been said above about a particular 
class of books of instruction applies equally to 
other classes. The result is, that you can seldom 
find exactly what you want to know. To write 
a well-organized grammar would really be a 
work of high art, and would require some of 
the qualities of a good general. It is not to be 
wondered at that Julius Caesar should have 
written a grammar ; for the functions of a good 
writer on grammar and a great general are not 
so far apart as we might imagine. In both 
cases you have to peneti^ate into a hostile 
country, and every movement onwards should 
have exactly the right force to maintain the 
movement. 

If we look at the cause of failure in works of 
instruction, and in the methods of instruction, 
it arises from a fault which has been before 
noticed as common to other forms of mal- 
organization ; namely, a forgetfulness of the 
main purpose for which the organism is in- 
Forgetful- tended. To that main purpose there must be 
nessofthe constant recurrence in the mind of the organi- 

main pur- 
pose, zer. In teaching, he has not to display knowl- 
edge, but to impart it ; and this purpose he has 
to maintain, at all hazard of being lengthy, or 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. jg^j 

tedious, or reiterative, — just as the builder has to 
remember that the house he is building is to be 
lived in ; a circumstance which, as I have before 
observed, is not always fully present to his mind. 
Turning now to an instance of organization 
of a very different kind, we may notice how much ^ ""s^nization 

•^ ^ J for domestic 

skill is required in organizing for domestic service, 
service and comfort. It is universally admitted 
that servants are the great difficulty of modern 
domestic life ; but very few aids and appliances, 
comparatively speaking, have been introduced 
to lessen domestic labor. Some persons who 
have considered this subject say that we are 
very unskilful as regards the movement of 
burdens of all kinds in our domestic economy. 
I am afraid that a better construction of houses 
would be necessary to effect the great im- 
provements which these persons contemplate. 
But the subject is well worth consideration ; 
and certainly, at present, it often seems as if 
there were very little work obtained from the 
force put in motion, and as if there must be 
somehow or other a great loss of labor. 

Of all the services which a man of an organ- 
izing mind can render to his country, one of 



/ 



164 



A^ ESSAY ON 



the first is that bestowal of patient thought 
and elaborate foresight which shall have for 
its result the organization of a policy upon 
some difficult and complicated subject. Take, 
for instance, our colonies and military outposts. 
Whether there are any of the latter which 
should not be retained ; what expenses we ought 
to defray, and what expenses we ought not to 
defray, in reference to our colonies ; what 
defences we should prepare for them, and what 
defences we should urge upon them to prepare 
for themselves, in case of war, — these are all 
great questions, and questions that we cannot 
escape from. Millions of money might be saved 
by the man who should investigate the relations 
between a Mother-country and its colonies, and 
who should apply his conclusions to the exact 
state of things with which Great Britain has at 
present to deal. As it is, the policy of most 
countries as regards these great subjects is purely 
accidental : it is at the mercy of obscure revolts 
in distant provinces : it depends upon the acci- 
dent of a demagogue rising here or there, or on 
the casual blunders of official personages. Mean- 
while the inhabitants of the Mother-country are 
often taxed for some colonial object which, if 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 165 

well understood, would be instantly abandoned ; 
and whole populations of laborious people are 
victimized for the sake of some idea which 
cannot be realized, and for some dubious and 
hesitating policy which will be shivered to 
atorris when there comes upon the Mother- 
country the real pressure of disastrous events. 

What we have said hitherto of the uses of 
organization has reference to matters, compara- 
tively speaking, private and provincial. But 
there is a use to which skilful organization 
might be directed, that far transcends all these. 
It is such a political organization of the gov- 
erning men, and of the better men throughout 
the various states of the world, as should enable 
them to have a potent voice in the conduct 
of the world's affairs. At this moment, there 
is scarcely a discreet person in England who 
is not deeply anxious for the maintenance 
of peace, — not of an armed peace, but of an 
inexpensive and real peace. Surely there are 
thousands of men in France, Germany, Russia, 
Italy, and Spain, who fondly desire the same 
great good. But a few commanders of legions, 
abetted by those persons in every state who 
are restless, intriguing, and vain-glorious, desire 



1 66 ^N ESSAY ON 

the contrary. And these latter prevail. If they 
cannot have war, at least they prevent most 
of the benefits of peace. Is there no way by 
organization of counteracting their designs .f^ 
The hackneyed expression of Burke — "when 
bad men conspire, good men should combine" 
— is not hackneyed in action. Doubtless this 
organization so much to be desired, though not 
an aim wholly beyond the endeavors of private 
individuals, lies chiefly within the province of 
skilful and foreseeing statesmen. There is such 
a desire for peace as we have described prev- 
alent throughout Europe ; and the leaders of 
mankind, as statesmen aim to be, might surely 
bring this desire into forcible action. When 
a Congress was last held in Europe, it was felt 
by many men that the objects of the Congress 
were but small, and that what Europe really 
needed was a Congress that should dare to 
speak boldly to ambitious monarchs respecting 
the vital subject of disarmament. 

One of the main difficulties in the way of 
such an organization is the frequent change 
of Ministers which must take place in Con- 
stitutional Governments, — those, too, being the 
Governments in which the desire of peace is 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. ' ^^>j 

most likely to prevail. But any Cabinet that 
should commence the heroic effort of an organ- 
ization for peace would lay down lines on 
which the noble vessel would hereafter be built. 
And, whether the attempt should prove fruitless 
or not, it ought to be made by statesmen, if 
statesmanship is to hold the high place in the 
world which it has hitherto maintained. Free- 
dom has not been gained by any nation without 
great and continuous efforts, which have been 
attended by any thing but continuous and un- 
varying success. Peace also is not to be gained 
but by great and skilful labor, and through 
much adversity of every kind. It is one of 
those triumphs which are not won without 
being planned for. Vague wishes will not 
produce it. We should not content our- 
selves with merely waiting for it, as san- 
guine men In desperate circumstances wait 
for some signal piece of good luck that 
should inevitably retrieve their affairs. It 
will more assuredly come by being worked 
for ; and it is not a good beyond the power 
of skilful organization, long and patiently 
directed, to attain. 



1 58 ^^ ESSAY ON 

I shall venture to add that there is a use of 
organization to which it has seldom been 
applied, and indeed where its application will 
at first be held to be ludicrous ; and that is the 
organization of pleasure. Inexperienced people 
imagine that festivity is an easy, haphazard sort 
of thing, that merely requires certain means and 
appliances, and that all will then go straight and 
right. But anybody who has tried to entertain 
300 persons will speak very differently. Indeed, 
throughout nature we may see that it is not the 
material, but the use of it, that gives the great 
result. Perhaps the air we breathe affords the 
most striking illustration of that fact which is 
anywhere to be found. In the atmosphere the 
elements are mechanically mixed, and they give 
life and health. Combine the same elements 
chemically, and they furnish the most deadly 
poison. All life would stop on this globe, if 
the nitrogen and oxygen in the air were chemi- 
cally combined. Indeed throughout chemistry 
a similar law is visible. It is two of this, and 
three of that, and five of the other, that make 
some useful compound. Change one of these 
numbers ever so little, and you have quite a 
different result ; perhaps a noxious one. These 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



169 



seem rather grand illustrations to apply to the 
organization of pleasure and festivity ; but they Organization 
are faithful illustrations, and of universal appli- ° ^ ^^^""• 
cation. For want of attending to a judicious 
combination of means, on most occasions of 
festivity, from an assembly at the grandest duke's 
dovsrn to a picnic in the country amongst country 
people, you may generally prophesy failure. 
The primary fact of number is seldom attended 
to, though you would imagine that this was one 
of the first things to be thought of. What is 
suitable for 200 is totally unsuitable for 270 ; 
and yet that additional 70 is often thrown in 
with the greatest carelessness. Hence it is that 
from crowding of people, from the want of 
judicious ingress and egress, from an unskilful 
position of furniture, from an inapt choice of 
guests, from a want of judicious introduction, 
most festivities are failures. Dances are given 
at which nobody can dance : assemblages of 
brilliant and conversable personages are collected 
together; but they cannot move about pleas- 
antly, and often their great souls are devoted to 
the serious questions of how they shall get out 
of that corner in which they are imprisoned, and 
how they shall eventually make their escape 



ihq an essay on 

from the party. Yet a little forethought and 
organization would have set all these things to 
rights. 

Our public amusements partake the same 
faults. There seems to be no knowledge that 
each living being requires a certain portion of 
air to recreate itself with, and that there is noth- 
ing but detriment for it without that necessary 
portion of air. An all-wise Providence has 
fixed that rule ; and it is no good attempting to 
Theatres, ignore it. There might be a theatre that should 
help to rent)vate the drama, and should be the 
delight of the world ; but if it is to do so in 
modern times, it must be so organized as regards 
its lighting, airing, warming, and especially as 
regards its facility of ingress and egress, as to 
combine all the necessary elements of reasonable 
comfort. 

The same law applies to the pleasures of the 
poor. Drunkenness is the great evil of the 
world. You will never remove it until you 
have organized better pleasures for the poor, 
especially those pleasures which should make 
drunkenness a slower affair. The fact that 
drunkenness is mostly managed in gin-palaces 
without sitting down is, alone a most disastrous 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



171 



circumstance. You see this when contrasting 
the habits of our own and of foreign nations. 
Put a man in a room where he can play domi- 
noes, read newspapers, and have what he con- 
siders good talk ; and you will observe that he 
will not drink as fast or as deep or as strongly 
as he otherwise would. In short there would be 
other things to amuse him besides drinking ; 
and what does he drink for, but to amuse him- 
self, and to forget troubles of every kind } 

It may be observed, generally, as regards ^he force of 
organization, that very few people appreciate ^"'"^^.''^ ^" 
the force of numbers.* For instance, as I have 
before said, it would astonish a person who has 
not tried it, to find how long it will take to divide 
and apportion victuals amongst 300 persons. 
And the same ignorance is visible in all dealings 
with crowds. Hardly anybody sufficiently con- 
siders what will give way under the pressure of 



* More than this : few of us have any power of 
accurately estimating number. On a clear night there 
are, it is said, but two thousand stars visible to an 
observer of ordinary powers of vision. Most persons, 
we have little doubt, imagine that they have seen 
thousands upon thousands. 



172 



AN ESSAY ON 



a crowd, or how easy it Is by skilful subdivision 
to diminish the threatened danger. What a 
road will bear ; what a bridge will carry ; how 
much labor animals can endure ; and, in fact, 
at what rate large bodies of men and sustenance 
can be efficiently moved, — are questions that 
may concern, at some critical moment, the 
supremacy of an empire. And the nation that 
has the best organizers to the front will be the 
Napoleon's i^^^ion that will win the day. The first Napo- 
skiU in Or- jgQj^ ^^g^ jj^ general, very skilful, prompt, and 
foreseeing in organization ; but in his latter days 
a defect pervaded his mode of organizing, which 
was fatal to him. He fell into routine and 
paper- work. I believe it was noticed in his ^ 
Leipsic campaign that there were wonderful 
plans drawn up by him on paper, and circulated 
as orders of the day : but parts of them could 
not be executed : they were not applicable to 
the state of facts ; and he was too imperious to 
listen to such remarks from his subordinates as, 
"Please your Majesty, nothing more can be done 
in this than is possible." 
Organization In short, all Organization must be followed up. 

should not be ^ 1 1 1 1 • • 1 t • 

inanimate. It should not be an mammate, but a livmg, 
growing thing, prepared to meet the endless 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



73 



chances and changes which take. place in this 
mutable world. Hence, in a consummate organ- 
izer, you require a versatility which can abandon 
to resume ; which expands in order afterwards 
to contract ; which has such a sense of the main 
result to be obtained, that it can sacrifice at once 
immense preparations no longer applicable to 
the shifting circumstances. This, of course, is 
the triumph of genius. The looker-on may call 
it haphazard work ; but it is really the highest 
form of organization. 

In a certain town in China, at the Hotel of Unfailmg 
the Three Perfections, the passers-by are in- business not 
formed that all sorts of business are negotiated hitherto 

° attained by 

with Unfailing Success.* What skill in the con- Western 

. . nations. 

duct of business may have been attamed by that 
aged, punctilious, and literate people, the -Chi- 
nese, who, according to their own account, have 
lived so many more thousand years upon the 
earth than other nations, we, a juvenile product 

* " By dint of looking on all sides, we at last 
espied a sign, on which was written in large Chinese 
characters, ' Hotel of the Three Perfections, lodging 
for travellers on Horse or Camel ; all sorts of business 
negotiated with Unfailing Success.' " — Hue's Tartary, 
Thibet, and China, chapter 5. 



174 



AN ESSAY ON 



of recent civilization, cannot presume to deter- 
mine. But, in these western parts of the world, 
we certainly have not yet attained the art of 
negotiating all sorts of business with unfailing 
success. On the contrary, our affairs are full of 
failure ; and, in laying down plans for organiza- 
tion, there is hardly ever allowance enough made 
for these failures, especially as regards the 
Failures to human agcuts, who are to be employed. It is 
ilr °^* almost amusing to hear the way in which men 
scheme out a public office, or propose arrange- 
ndents for military or naval service. If it is 
a public office, they divide it, perhaps, into 
departments, at the head of each one of which, 
they say, there is to be a clever man. Perhaps, 
too, it is provided that he is to be chosen out of 
the ranks of men already in the oflSce. But, 
unfortunately, aptitude in a lower department 
does not necessarily infer aptitude in a higher ; 
and even a power of choosing men, which is 
unfettered, and which is really exercised with 
the best intentions, will not always ensure a 
good choice, simply because you cannot find out 
whether men can w^ork well in a particular way 
until they have been tried in it. As a notable 
instance of this, it may be obsei*ved that some 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



^75 



men's faculties are benumbed by responsibility ; 
while, on the contrary, the faculties of others 
are quickened by it ; and the man whom you 
thought frivolous, light, indolent, or indifferent, 
is, all of a sudden, changed by responsibility 
into a being of another character. 

Many other reasons might be adduced ; * but, 
whatever the reasons may be, the fact is certain, 
that, choose as you will, you must make a large 
allowance for failures. Hence, in any organiza- 
tion of men to do any work, you must provide 

something like autocratic power resident in some Autocratic 

power, 
one person, who must find the men to do the 

work, especially when the need for good men is 
urgent. When the elder Pitt chose Wolfe to 
take the command in Canada, it was not that 
any system of military organization had brought 
Wolfe into that position naturally ; but the min- 
ister heard of the man ; sent for him ; looked at 
him ; asked him whether he could do the work 

* For instance, before you have had some experi- 
ence of the way in which a man handles business, 
how can you know whether he will divide to metho- 
dize, or divide to subtilize? Bacon says: "He that 
doth not divide will never enter well into business ; 
and he that divideth too much will never come out of 
it clearly." 



176 



AN ESSAY ON 



that was to be done ; and, judging from his 
answer, and from the whole bearing of the man, 
that he was the right kind of person, resolved, 
on his own responsibility, to appoint him. No 
system can supply the place of personal knowl- 
edge and judgment ; but a system maybe so 
organized as always to allow room for the exer- 
cise of this knowledge and judgment. 

Trial of Or- In forming any organization, it is most de- 
sirable to get in some way or other a trial of 
it ; so that it shall meet with all the strain that 
it will have to encounter in real life, and yet, 
if it should break down, the failure should not 
be absolutely disastrous. It is said that one of 
the great firms, whose business it is to build 
locomotive engines, never allows an engine to 
go out of the yard, until it has travelled a 
thousand miles in that yard. This is as it 
should be ; and a like precaution might be 
adopted in many other matters. The necessity 
for these trials and rehearsals arises, of course, 
out of the weakness of our nature. Even the 
largest and most foreseeing minds are apt to 
overlook or forget some small thing which yet 
is requisite for success. And thus harmonious 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 177 

working can only be insured by previous trial. 
How much this is requisite is nowhere better 
seen than in the getting-up of an amateur play. 
All the performers shall know their parts 
thoroughly well, and be very clever men and 
women ; but the rehearsal discloses to them a rehearsal, 
many small points of dialogue, and dexterous 
little arrangements of " properties," which 
have to be arbitrarily settled and provided for 
beforehand, if the performance is to go off well 
and smoothly. It is likely that considerable dis- 
couragement will be felt after the first rehearsal 
has taken place ; but that discouragement, lead- 
ing to adaptation of all kinds, is often the 
parent of a sure success. Everybody will admit 
the ti'uth of the foregoing remarks, and even 
think them somewhat commonplace. But yet 
what many of us do not see is, that we could 
institute more trials, experiments, and rehearsals More triads 

might be 

than we do adopt ; and we should institute them instituted. 
if we were once deeply convinced of the exceed- 
ing and peculiar benefit of all such trials. In 
building, for example, hardly any labor is thrown 
away which is given to very accurate models 
made in the first instance, — models not only of 
the proposed building, but of the buildings 

13 



1^8 ^^ ESSAY ON- 

which surround It. The same remark applies 
to works of art, especially to those of a public 
character, in which, if models were made, not 
only of the work of art proposed, but of all 
that vfTould come near it and be In the same 
purview, much absurdity and irrelevance would 
be prevented. Again, in the disposition and 
arrangement of troops for offence or defence, 
frequent trials of their capability for movement 
are essential to the efficiency of the force ; and 
I suppose a general would rather have under 
his command fifty thousand men, of whose 
powers of movement and concentration he had 
had some experience, than a hundred thousand 
of equal worth in other respects, but of whose 
powers of movement he knew nothing. It is 
only by these experiments that we learn to make 
due allowance for adverse and peculiar circum- 
stances. The effects of fair weather, rainy 
weather, or snowy weather, on the movements 
of troops or of the materials for war, will only 
be thoroughly ascertained by practical experi- 
ment. The Duke of Wellington, after observ- 
ing, with the late Lord Londonderry, a review 
of an immense number of Russian troops, 
made some such observation as the following : 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 17^ 

"You see, Charles, this is all very fine ; but I 
think our little army could move round about 
them in every direction in a way that would 
astonish them." The Duke knew from experi- 
ence what he could do with his little army. 

It is for reasons similar to the above that it is 
so valuable to gain the advantage of a new eye 
to look upon any matter of organization. 
Honest criticism is always very valuable to a 
man of settled purposes who can bear a great 
deal of criticism without being overpowered 
by it. And nowhere is criticism likely to be criticism. 
more available than when it is addressed to 
systems of organization. I have no doubt 
that there is not a system of organization exist- 
ing in this country, however well devised, 
which, if submitted in all its details to a shrewd 
man of organizing nature, might not in some 
point or other be considerably improved by his 
suggestions. The people who are engaged in 
working out any thing soon come to love the 
mode of working, and to believe in it a little 
more than they should do. The cold unpreju- 
diced eye of a bystander, called in for consulta- The workers 
tion, will see things to which the wisest men "^^^ft^"^ 

° dull about 

engaged in the working of the organization improving it. 



l8o ^N ESSAY ON 

have become somewhat blind. An indolent 
boy, probably devoted to marbles, was set to 
work in a complicated system of machinery 
to conduct some small operation, which he 
found could be managed just as well by con- 
necting two parts of the machinery with a 
string, while he was thus left free to play with 
his marbles. That circumstance led to an 
improvement in a certain branch of machinery. 
It is true that in this instance the improvement 
was found out in practice ; but discoveries of a 
similar kind are often more likely to be made by 
a shrewd stranger than by those who are so 
accustomed to the practical management of the 
machine, that they have lost In some measure 
the power of criticising, and have ceased to 
look out for improvements. 

Readiness of Readlness of resource must always be a great 
element in the good working of any organiza- 
tion. It may not be wanted in the mind of the 
person who plans the organization. He has, 
or ought to have, plenty of time to form his 
plans, and abundance of opportunity for consul- 
tation with others ; but in execution ready and 
fertile minds are requisite. It must be owned 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. igj 

that it Is difficult to discover this readiness by 

any formal examination, but a little converse 

with a man may soon lead to the discovery of 

whether he is a ready man or not. As I said 

before, I have advisedly taken all manner of 

commonplace instances to illustrate this essay ; 

and I now choose a humorous and trivial one. 

In a remote country place there was a building ^^ example 

suddenly to be prepared and used for a festal of readiness 

J r r of resource 

occasion. The work was done in a hurry, and 
there was no opportunity for any rehearsal of 
the festivity. The carpenters did not leave off 
working until the time when, with sharp ears, 
the sound of approaching wheels might be 
heard. The building was lighted up ; but 
owing to the roof being lined with a dark 
canvas, and to other circumstances, the lighting 
was totally inadequate. The managers looked 
at one anothei: in dismay ; not that all the 
dismay on their countenances could be seen, on 
account of the general dimness that prevailed. 
" What is to be done ? " they exclaimed. A 
young man standing by said, " Seize upon the 
carriage-lamps : they will furnish us an abun- 
dant supply of light." Others w^ere quick enough 
to discern the modes by which these lamps might 



1 82 ^N ESSAY ON 

be attached to the building. A remedy was 
thus provided, and that which would have been 
an egregious failure was turned into a complete 
success. Now this is one of those cases in 
which people exclaim, How obvious a remedy ! 
how sure we are that we should have thought 
of that! But probably no one would have 
thought of it; at any rate no one but a man of 
ready resource. The young man's reply to that 
difficult question is equal in value to nine good 
answers on the Peloponnesian War, an ample 
account of the digamma, eleven solutions of 
sums in decimal fractions, not to mention three 
accurate lists of kings, given in reply to ques- 
tions set by examiners for the Civil Service. I 
am not ridiculing these functionaries. They 
have no opportunity of testing men in this way ; 
but these little things are famous tests, and are 
among the best proofs of the highest qualities. 
And they are only to be got at by personal 
knowledge. The result is that the most service- 
able men are not to be found out by any me- 
chanical system, be the mechanism ever so good. 

Let no man say, because an organism con- 
tinues to exist, and has continued for a long 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



183 



time, that its organization is therefore good. It Tenacity of 

is astonishing what a long time a thing will last or^ni^g. 

which has yet lost its chief meaning and savor. 

All people have a conservative element in them ; 

and, besides, the want of time prevents men 

from looking closely into an existing institution, 

and considering whether it. serves the purpose 

they mean it to serve. And so the organism 

goes on like an old tree that has long ceased to 

make any accretions of vitality, that is dying 

at the root, and dying at the branches, and 

putting forth fewer leaves and smaller fruit 

every year. But still, to the unobservant eye, 

it seems very strong ; and it is not until the day 

of its fall that men find out how decayed it was, 

and wonder that it could have stood upright so 

long. This tenacity in certain organisms, and 

the unwillingness of men to interfere with them, 

even when they suspect them to be of little use, 

or perhaps a hindrance rather than a service, 

must be taken largely into account by those who 

would propose any new organization to take 

the place of what has been a long time before 

the eyes of the world. 

The passport system affords an example of The passport 
organization which is deserving of notice, es- ^y^*®™- 



184 ^^^ ESSAY ON 

pecially as regards what has been said above 
respecting the tenacity of certain organisms. It 
has often happened that a man has seen some- 
thing flourishing in his own times, which he is 
well aware will in future cease to exist, and of 
which he would like to leave an accurate account 
on record for the benefit of future ages. If any 
person were, with that view, to seek to describe 
the passport system, he would be greatly puz- 
zled. It is not that he could not give a fair 
account of the physical and material aspect of 
the system ; but he would feel that posterity 
would ask, at the outset, and before entering 
into any details, what wefe the main drift and 
meaning of the system. And he would be 
unable to give any satisfactory reply to this 
question. Does it serve to protect the head of 
the State from the danger of assassination.'* 
Does it in any way prevent insubordination, or 
check conspiracy? He will be obliged to 
answer in the negative. The most dangerous 
man in Europe would find no difficulty in 
going where he listed. What reason, there 
fore, can be given for such a system being main 
tained ? It is grievous, onerous, and expensive. 
It vexes innocent people, discourages con;imerce, 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



185 



and creates general dissatisfaction. It cannot 
justly be replied that it gives- employment to 
many persons ; and that despotic monarchs fear 
to do away with the system for fear of its dis- 
tressing private individuals. Nothing would be 
easier than to give ample compensation to the 
persons at present employed ; and no grievance 
to the subject could be made out of the abolition 
of such a system. This peculiar case of organ- 
ization has been cited for two reasons. First, 
it affords a notable instance of an utter want of 
thought as to the object to be attained. If the 
object is to protect states and monarchs from the 
intrusion of dangerous men into their dominions, 
the passport system ought to be made a thou- The passport 
sand times more strict. It should be dealt with 
like persecution in matters of faith, which will 
succeed, as the history of the world shows, if 
sufficiently severe and continuous ; but a perse- 
cution which pinches, but does not suppress, 
is merely an irritant, and not an absorbent. 
Secondly, this passport system affords an in- 
stance of an organism of which the spirit has 
long ago died out, but which stands upright, 
and may seem to have some strength and mean- 
ing in it, merely because it cumbers the earth 
and is a decided hindrance. 



1 86 -^^ ESSAY ON 

Various kinds of organization have been con- 
sidered in this essay. Many hindrances to good 
organization have been pointed out, and some 
few^ furtherances have been shown ; but, after 
all, what must be mainly relied upon is to get 
the organizing man. 

It may be asked what are the nearest gifts to 

this power of organization that is so much 

wanted in the world? How can we divine 

whether a man will be a good organizer, or 

Qualities of whether he will not? This is a question that 

a good 

Organizer. Can hardly be answered except by some observa- 
tion of the particular man. Apprehensiveness 
has been declared to be necessary. This quality 
may soon be discerned in any person. More- 
over, what method there is in any man's mode 
of working may readily be observed if only a 
little of the man's work is submitted for inspec- 
tion. There are other qualifications, however, 
which are more difficult to be discerned. Two 
essential qualities in a good organizer are a 
thorough and constant perception of the end in 
view, and a power of dealing with masses of 
details, never forgetting that they are details, and 
not becoming their slave. It requires much con- 
verse with a man before you can ascertain his 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



187 



qualifications in either of the foregoing respects, 
especially the former. It must take some time 
to ascertain of any man that he is clear and con- 
stant in his main purpose, and is not to be led 
away from it by the dexterous fulfilment (de- 
vised by himself or others) of smaller ends and 
aims. Then, again, a man may be judiciously 
apprehensive, methodical, clear and constant in 
his purpose, and great in the mastery of details, 
so far as the research into them and the putting 
them in some kind of order is concerned ; but 
he may not be skilful in putting them afterwards Deficiency 
in their right places. There is a want of pro- °^ certam 

•^ men m the 

portion in his work. He knows what work is last toxich of 
to be done, and what kind of machinery must ^^^^ 
be invented to do it. He has skilfully collected 
and methodized his materials. But he cannot 
fit them well together in the order in which they 
are to work. And this peculiar kind of skill can 
hardly be predicated of any man until you have 
seen him in action. 

Such are the difficulties which must beset the 
search after skilful organizers ; which cannot be 
an easy task, whether it be undertaken by a 
monarch in search of a minister, or a minister 
in search of a general or of a head of a- civil 



1 88 ^^ ESSAY ON 

department ; or whether, in lower spheres, it is 
the search on the part of a number of individ- 
uals banded together in some social or commer- 
cial enterprise for a man to organize victory for 
them. This phrase of organizing victory was 
applied, I believe, to Carnot ; and it does not 
give organization more than its due. 

It may easily be inferred, if what has been 
Examina- above Stated has any truth in it, that all exami- 

tionsmaynot . i -i i i i i • i • • . 

bring out the ^^^tions that should merely deal with acquisition, 
Organizer. -^quJ^^ probably fail in enabling us to discern 
the man of an organizing mind. The knowl- 
edge that was to be acquired lay before the man. 
His powers of taking it up are one thing : his 
powers of working it are another. He has 
dealt with the past ; you will want him to deal 
with the future. 

I suspect it is often imagined that eloquent 
men are deficient in powers of organization. 
But there is no truth in this ; for, as far as the 
eloquent man shows method and foresight in his 
speaking, he shows qualities which fit him for 
organization. The same holds good of great 
writers as well as of great speakers. 

It is an immense error to suppose that men 
who have shown themselves excellent in imagi- 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. 



189 



nation are, on that account, deficient in practi- imaginative 
cal powers. It is said that Lord Byron would ^"'^ ^'^™^^ 

•^ '' men not 

have made a skilful politician. There is no deficient in 

powers of Oi^ 

doubt that Goethe and Sir Walter Scott * were ganization. 
first-rate men of business. It happened to the 
writer of this essay to be once concerned with 
others in a very diflicult transaction, in reference 
to which communications were addressed to 
them by all manner of people. The two com- 
munications which, for clearness of view and 
mastery of details, were thought to be pre-emi- 
nent, came from two remarkable men of letters. 
The writer was afterwards not surprised to hear 
that one is a consummate manager of private 
theatricals, and that the parish of the other is a 
model parish. There is a certain learned Dean 
of the present day f who is perhaps the best 
chairman of a committee that can be met with ; 
and, in fact, literature, science, and art would be 
found in all ages to supply men peculiarly capa- 

* Any errors of Sir Walter in his own affairs do 
not conclusively militate against this statement. Gen- 
erous men are particularly apt to neglect their own 
affairs, and to commit errors in them which they would 
not commit in the affairs of others intrusted to them. 
Observe the life of Lord Bacon in proof of this. 

t 1862. 



190 



AN ESSAY ON 



ble for the practical management of the ordi- 
nary affairs of life, and who would be likely to 
excel in organization, as they have already done 
something which requires organizing skill.* 

Finally, in any work that a man has done 
some of his aptitude for organization may be 
obsei"ved. A quibbling, crotchety person lacks, 
of course, the nature fitted to organize. A san- 
guine person lacks the nature to commence 
organization, although he may be able to main- 
tain it when it is placed in his hands. Pliancy 
and firmness are both needed. A judicious abid- 
ance by rules, and holding to the results of expe- 
rience, are good ; but not less so, are a judicious 
setting aside of rules, and a declining to be 
bound by incomplete experience. War furnishes 

* Anybody who has watched Mr. Carlyle's skill in 
attaining any information he cares to obtain must see 
that he could have been an excellent man of business. 
His drafts and his despatches might have been ex- 
pressed in language not strictly in accordance with 
that of routine, but they would have been full of 
insight and foresight, and practicality of all kinds. 
Again, no one has ventured to say that Mr. John 
Stuart Mill's learning, imagination, and logical 
powers have at all dimmed his reputation as an 
accomplished administrator. 



ORGANIZATION IN DAILY LIFE. i^i 

the best illustrations of what U wanted in this 
respect. Drill Is a good thing ; but drill Is not 
to master us. To keep within reach of our sup- 
plies is a needful thing ; but splendid movements 
have been executed in contravention to this rule. 
To have a base for our operations Is no doubt a 
good military rule ; but, occasionally, baseless 
operations have effected great results in war. 
And other instances might be multiplied with- 
out end. 

In conclusion, we cannot do better than turn 
again to Nature. In her organization there are 
the " vital force" which makes the plant grow, 
and the substances, organic and inorganic, which 
supply its sustenance. These latter correspond 
to our preparations of material, our rules, regu- 
lations, and ordinances, without a supply of 
which the organizing faculty will die, but which 
often smother it, or at least obstruct Its growth. 
On the other hand, without these rules, forms, 
regulations, and preparations, the organizing 
faculty ends in mere ideas, and shrewd prophet- 
ic insight, leading, however, to no good result. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY 
CARRIAGE. 



•^ I ^HE foregoing essay had been written some 
time ago. It had been printed, and privately 
circulated ; and, to tell the truth, I had almost for- 
gotten its existence, when I was fully reminded of it 
by the following circumstance. 

We authors fancy we seldom hear the truth about 
ourselves, or our productions. Criticism, we tliink, 
is, for the most part, rather careless, and needs not 
be much attended to. When it is elaborate, if it be 
friendly, we fancy we discern the hand of a friend. 
If hostile, we flatter ourselves that we detect an 
enemy. Not that anybody is blessed with many 
enemies who can write elaborate criticisms ; but still 
our outraged feelings are apt to insist upon the 
existence of personal dislike when our works are 
unfavorably treated. 

There is one place, however, where we must 
admit that we are likely to hear the truth about 
ourselves, and our productions. The fact is that 
13 



1^4 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

Truth has, in these latter days, grown tired of living 
in such a damp place as the bottom of a well ; and, 
moreover, like the rest of the world, has become 
restless, and fond of travelling hither and thither, 
in a railway carriage. At any rate that is where 
I think I met with a great deal of truthful com- 
ment on the foregoing essay. 

It happened thus : I had taken my place in a 
railway carriage for the north of England, and was 
looking forward with some doubt as to the nature 
of my journey through the long day, which I knew 
would depend much upon the quality, pleasant or 
otherwise, of my companions. I watched them 
well as they took their places in the carriage. 
Three arrived together. One was a middle-aged 
man, with a worn, anxious look, carelessly dressed, 
partially bald, and very weary-looking. I could 
not help thinking that 1 had seen the face before ; 
and, carefully interrogating my memory, I recol- 
lected that he was an influential person at some 
public office — an Under-Secretary of State, or some- 
thing of that kind ; and that he had been present 
with the minister when receiving a deputation of 
which I had been a member. I remembered that 
he had asked one or two very shrewd questions, 
which were not those we were prepared to answer ; 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE, jgr 

and that we had quarrelled a little amongst our- 
selves when attempthig to answer them, which had 
given the minister a great advantage. The other two 
passengers were, as I afterwards found out, lawyers 

going to the Assizes at . One of them was a 

jovial-looking, rubicund, imperative man, who is a 
leading member of the Circuit. As will afterwards 
be seen, he is a man who indulges in unmeasured 
assertions, and whose language on all occasions is 
strong. The other was a very refined young man, 
with a long sharp nose, and a subtle expression of 
countenance, who evidently delighted in nice points 
of difference, and who seemed to think that he neg- 
lected his duty if he allowed any statement to pass 
unquestioned. From his careful mode of expres- 
sion I conjectured that he was one of those young 
lawyers who write a great deal for the liigher 
branches of the press ; but he had now got a case 
at the Assizes, which he much rejoiced to talk over 
with his rubicund friend and leader. There were 
two places left ; and these were soon filled by a 
lady, accompanied by a sickly-looking deformed 
boy or youth (for it was diflicult to tell his age) of 
whom she took the most tender care. 

The lawyers and the statesman were not accom- 
panied by any friends ; and their chief attachments 



jq5 essay on organization. 

seemed to be to their carpet-bags and their luggage. 
Troops of friends, however, came with the lady and 
the sickly youth ; and I observed that on parting she 
contrived to say something pleasant, or hopeful, 
or kindly, to each one of them. The sickly youth 
gazed languidly at his friends in all the apathy 
of sickness, but condescended to give a nod or two, 
as the train moved slowly off. 

The lady, who was of an uncertain age, making 
us doubt whether she was the mother or the aunt 
or the sister of the sickly boy, was one of those in 
whose eyes a history may be read. Pleasant and 
gracious, witty and sad, was the expression of her 
features, which were irregularly beautiful. Her 
voice was extremely sweet ; and instinctively every 
one in the carriage wished to pay some attention 
to her, which was easily done by making every 
arrangement for the comfort of the sick youth. 

I thought to myself, something may be made out 
of this party ; and the journey will not be dull, espe- 
cially as the eyes of our rubicund friend in the 
corner gleam with an imperious merriment. He 
will be sure to break the ice of silence. I was little 
prepared, however, for what immediately happened. 
The pale young lawyer pulled out of his pocket my 
unfortunate essay, and said to the Statesman, " This 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 107 

is the pamphlet which the Serjeant and I were 
talking to you about at dinner yesterday. There 
are lots of things in it to be questioned, as I think, 
— so does the Serjeant, — but your business is 
Organization ; and when you have skimmed it over, 
we might have some talk about it." " Skimmed it 
over," said I to myself; " and this is the way even 
the intelligent part of the public — men with noses 
like that — talk of productions which have cost us 
poor devils nights and days of anxious thought." 

The " skimming-over " was effected in half an 
hour by the Statesman ; and an animated conversa- 
tion then began, of which I will endeavor to give 
some notion to the reader. As I must distinguish 
the personages, I will call the elder lawyer the 
" First Lavk^yer," and the young man the " Second 
Lawyer," as we distinguish two bandits in a theatri- 
cal piece. The Under-Secretary I will call " the 
Statesman." Then there are " the Lady," and 
*' the Sickly Youth ; " and, lastly, there is myself, 
*' the Author." 

Second Lawyer. Well, sir, you have skimmed 
it over now. Of course I did not mean to say that 
the fellow {this is the respectful recognition we 
have amongst the public) was always clear in his 



1^8 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

ideas. Sometimes his organization is active ; some- 
times it is passive. Sometimes he merely means a 
plan ; sometimes a policy : and sometimes his 
organization is only forethought. But there is a 
sort of an idea running through it all, which it 
might be w^orth v^^hile to consider. 

First Lawyer. I w^ould have one of them 
attached to the front of the engine of all the express 
trains, and no damages v^hatever should be recover- 
able if he vi^ere smashed to atoms. 

Second Lawyer. My learned friend is not so 
precise as he would be if he were arguing before 
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn ; but by " them " he 
certainly means railway directors ; and he is evi- 
dently thinking of that part of the essay which 
relates to railway organization. 

First Lawyer. The author is quite right when 
he speaks of the want of organization there. The 
station where we shall stop to dine is a place where 
no animal but an ostrich could get a dinner. The 
book by which we have labored to ascertain our 
times of departure and arrival is a conglomeration 
of hideous confusion, which can be likened to noth- 
ing but the state of European policy at the present 
moment. If a fire should arise in this very car- 
riage, six estimable persons would be needlessly 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 1 99 

burnt alive ; two lawyers, of whose eminence, pres- 
ent and to come, it does not become me to speak ; 
one statesman ; a fair lady who would evidently be 
missed by a large circle of loving friends ; an intel- 
ligent youth ; and a great ship-owner, or manufac- 
turer {this he said with a slight hozv to me; though 
why he should have assumed that I was a ship- 
owner or manufacturer.^ I could not see, I returned 
the bow, merely saying the words " Not great, 
sir"). I hope the world would miss us, and that, if 
we were burnt alive, some simple process would be 
invented by which the passengers in any carriage 
could communicate with the guard. 

The Author. One of the things most wanted 
in the world is to bring special knowledge into 
general use. 

Second Lawyer. I don't see what you mean, or 
how it applies. 

The Author. Well, it will be difficult to ex- 
plain. But what I mean is this : you see a difficulty 
overcome here, by this person ; and you know of 
various persons here and there who are laboring, 
or who ought to labor, against the same difficulty ; 
and the special knowledge necessary never seems 
to reach their benighted minds. 

I have often fancied I should like to take out a 



200 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

party of innkeepers, or a board of directors, on 
a travelling excursion, simply to show them how 
things are better done elsewhere. 

The Statesman. Oh ! if you want to improve 
the administration of railways, I will tell you how 
to do it. Look out for a very ingenious, sickly 
man, with a large family — 

The Lady. Poor fellow ! 

The Statesjnan — And give him 4,000/. a year 
as an inspector of railways. Let him make short 
reports, in good English, of his sufferings on the 
different railways ; specifj'ing names, dates, and 
every particular. He must be bound to travel, 
occasionally, with his whole family, in the depth 
of winter. 

The Lady. And only to receive 4,000/. a year } 
I cannot think, sir, that you have had much expe- 
rience of travelling with large families. 

Second Lazuyer. But do we not know all about 
these sufferings at present ? 

The Statesman. Not sufficiently in detail. An 
ordinary person would be ashamed to describe 
these minutias ; but it must be this man's business. 
Besides, seriously speaking, he would meet with 
great differences of treatment. One thing is well 
managed on this railway, another on that. H^ 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 201 

would be able to praise, as well as to blame. There 
is one railway I know of, on which, to my judg- 
ment, the coupling of the carriages is not sufficiently 
attended to. There is another railway on which I 
have never found the same fault. My inspector 
would tell the world these things, and an effect 
would be produced upon the traffic of these lines. 

First Lawyer. An official man is always an 
official man, and has a wild belief in the value of 
reports. According to him all celestial influences 
attend !Blue Books. 

The Author. Now, here is an instance of an 
organization proposed. I do not say whether it is 
wise or unwise, feasible or unfeasible ; but it indi-- 
Gates something that may be done in the required 
direction. Did time permit, I could give many 
more instances of the advantages of bringing spe- 
cial knowledge to bear. And railway organiza- 
tion — 

The Statesman. Oh ! railway organization is 
sure to be attended to ultimately, when there have 
been eight or ten great accidents, happening near 
together in point of time, and during the session of 
Parliament — for that is impsrative. But political 
and official organization are what I confess interest 
me most. 



202 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

The Author. I think you are right. I maintain 
that the world is more foolish now than it ever was. 
Look at France and England going on just like two 
vulgar people in a small town, outbidding each 
other in frantic expenses. 

First Lawyer. I think I was not so far wrong 
in putting this gentleman down as a ship-owner, or 
manufacturer — probably one of the peace party. 

The Statestnan. But yet, sir, you cannot main- 
tain that our war expenditure is needless, and that 
our ministers are wrong in urging on the national 
defences ? 

The Author. I do not say that they are wrong. 
If I were in their place, I have no doubt I should do 
as they do. But I maintain that, if there were skil- 
ful political organization in the great Euroj^ean 
family of nations, or even if there were skilful 
organization among the more intelligent men of 
each individual country (for they are all against 
war), this ruinous armed peace would have more 
chance of being brought to an end in our time. 

Second Lawyer. Then you have read the pam- 
phlet, sir.'* 

The Author. Yes. It has been lying about 
upon our table at home, and I have often taken 
it up. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 203 

The Lady. It hardly becomes me to put in a 
word amongst you learned gentlemen ; but I must 
say, for the honor of our sex, that, if we had the 
management of affairs, we should not spend quite 
so much money as you gentlemen do upon warlike 
engines. Charles tells me [who is Charles^ I won 
del'? I hate Charles'] that one of these iron vessels 
costs 400,000/. We women should think a great 
deal, and perhaps talk a little, before we expended 
that sum — 

I^irst Lawyer — In any thing but fancy goods, 
madam. (We alllaughed,) 

The Lady. Well, there would at any rate be 
something beautiful to show for our money. 

Second Lawyer. And do you think you would 
long delight in these " fancy goods " my learned 
friend speaks of, if there were not some of these 
dark floating creatures to defend the fancy goods, 
and the fair wearers thereof } 

The Lady. I do not know. I am sure, though, 
we should not spend the money so recklessly as you 
do. We should keep more of it to buy tea and 
sugar with, and to improve our homes. The ladies 
in France would do the same, and so it would come 
to the same thing in the end. 

Second Lawyer. You mean, madam, that both 



204 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION, 

nations would be equally unprepared for defence, 
and that both nations would be far more comfort- 
able, if the women had the management of affairs. 

First Lawyer. I am sure, madam, you do 
manage us. 

The Lady. No. You get away from us, and 
talk all night in Parliament, and vote away our 
money without our having any thing to say to it ; 
and then come back again, and say how much you 
have worked for your country. 

First Lawyer. There is no arguing with a 
lady. She overcomes us at all points. 

The Statesma7t. What a theme the present 
troubles in America * would have given the author 
to show the want of organization ! All the mis- 
chief there has risen from disorganization, political, 
social, military. If there had been an organized 
policy on the part of the North, war might never 
have been. 

Second Lawyer. There, permit me to say, sir, 
you fall into the. error of the author. You mean 
that If there had been a profound and logical state- 
ment of the nature of the dispute, and of the reme- 
dies to be aimed at, war might have been prevented. 
But that is not organization. 

* This was written in 1862. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 205 

The Author. I do not know. It is the result 
of organization, and it is the organization of 
thought. 

The Statesman, Well, never mind the author. 
He must take care of himself against the critics. 
But to return to the subject. I admit that the Nor- 
thern Americans have shown great want of organi- 
zation ; but that has not been their only or perhaps 
their chief fault. Now, look at their wonderful 
boastfulness. There was a sentence in the Presi- 
dent's last speech, that I think is, without exception, 
the most boastful and absurd I ever read in any pub- 
lic document. I have read not a few Blue Books, 
and assisted in the compounding of not a few of 
them ; but I never read any thing like this. 

Second Lawyer. Well, what is " this" .? 

The Statesman. The President said that in many 
of his regiments there were men fit to form a Cab- 
inet, a Council, a Congress — perhaps even a Court. 
Now, from my position, I have seen a good many 
of the men who do form Cabinets and Councils 
and Congresses ; and even of those who are in no 
great estimation with the public, the majority are 
rather remarkable personages. In looking round 
upon the men of our year \nodding to the Ser- 
jeanf] at Oxford, you probably find only one or 



206 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION, 

two fit to be in a Cabinet, a Council, a Congress, 
or even to adorn a Court ; and yet an American 
regiment of volunteers is to furnish complete Coun- 
cils, Cabinets, and Congresses ! The absurdity is 
" tempestuous," as Sir Charles Wetherall would have 
said. I felt, when I read that sentence of the Presi- 
dent's, that much evil must come upon a people 
whose chief magistrate could utter such wild non 
sense unrebuked. If there were any British states- 
man so absurd as to endeavor to put such a sentence 
before the chief personage in the land, to be uttered 
by her, we all must feel that there would be a refu- 
sal to utter it. And yet no doubt the Queen has as 
high an opinion of her regiments as the President 
can justly have of his. 

First Lawyer. You are quite right. The ab- 
surdity is gigantic. 

The Statesman. Future historians will ask why 
there was not more sympathy In England with the 
Northern Americans at the present crisis. We 
care a great deal about slavery : we naturally feel 
much for a people speaking our own language, 
and having many of our own modes of thinking ; 
there are, in short, hundreds of ties between the two 
peoples : but their boasting has disgusted, and to a 
certain extent alienated us. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 207 

Moreover, however much we were disposed to 
sympathize with the North, we could not approve 
of nor adopt their language in speaking of the 
South. We did not think that " rebels " was the 
right word to apply to the men of the South ; and 
we could not imagine that a union would ever be 
cemented by conquest. 

The Author. The Americans are mistaken if 
they suppose that there are not a great many per- 
sons in England, who feel the deepest and most 
painful interest in the present hideous contest. For 
my own part, I could sit down and mourn, and 
utter doleful Jeremiads without end. 

But, to tell the truth, my sorrowing is not so 
much for the combatants, or for the present genera- 
tion : they have their amusement, and their excite- 
ment. My grief is for poor people in the future, 
who will know, as we know, the full bitterness of 
large taxation. It was a comfort to think that there 
was at least one people on the earth to whom the 
tax-gatherer was not a terror ; who, after the death 
of a head of a family, were not to see their moth- 
er's trinkets and their father's old familiar watch 
appraised, in order to ascertain^to the minutest 
farthing the personal property which the deceased 
had possessed. We have become accustomed to 



3o8 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

these things ; but they are horrors. And what are 
they but the results of the great wars of former 
generations ? 

The eminent Americans we have seen in this 
country have, for the most part, been persons who 
would be likely to give a very favorable impression 
of their country. Such men as Mr. Sumner, Mr. 
Everett, Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Ticknor, 
Mr. Motley, Mr. Hawthorne, would do honor to 
any country. But, somehow or other, you do not 
in American state papers see many traces of these 
men. 

Then, as regards the eminent authoress we have 
seen here, Mrs. Stowe : Was there ever a more 
gentle or pleasant lioness.'' At least, from what I 
have heard, -considering her astounding success, 
coming all at once and suddenly upon her, she bore 
her honors most meekly. 

The Second Lawyer, Even as regards ordinary 
Americans, such as you meet abroad travelling, I 
think you cannot fail to be struck with their good- 
nature, even when they commence blowing their 
tiresome national trumpet. It is the boastfulness 
of young people. One thinks of that saying about 
" a young bear with all its troubles to come ; " 
and now these troubles have come upon the 
nation. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 209 

First Lawyer. Who ever invented that saying 
about the young bear ? and why should a bear have 
more troubles than the rest of the animal family ? 
There's a question for an examination paper. 

The Author. I am sure I can get some marks 
then for an answer. The proverb, no doubt, 
arose in bear-baiting times. We, having become 
more humane, have lost our appreciation of the 
proverb. 

Second Lawyer. Well, in talking over the 
matter, we have become quite tolerant as regards 
individual Americans. 

The Author. I think you were somewhat hard 
upon the disposition of the Americans, even as 
gathered from their state papers. The rest of the 
world are quite as absurd, only more measured in 
talk and more decorous. I go back to the reckless 
expenditure upon armies among all the chief nations 
in Europe. 

Second Lawyer. You know the theory of some 
learned divine : that the human race goes mad at 
times, and of course, like other mad people, does 
not suspect its own madness? 

The Author. Yes ; and some other ingenious 
person has maintained that this madness has gen- 
erally prevailed in the middle of centuries. 
14 



2IO . ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

The Statesfuan. Oh ! that's too absurd : recol- 
lect the French Revolution. I am quite willing to 
admit the previous proposition. 

The Author. It is in one of its warlike mad- 
nesses now. And when this is the case, and when 
great potentates possess huge armies, you feel that 
if this difficult question, or that complication of 
affairs, were by good fortune to be amicably settled, 
the main cause of terror would still remain. 

Have you ever been m the West Indies } [ They 
answered in the negative 7\ Well, you take a soli- 
tary walk there ; and, looking over the imbrowned 
plain, you cannot discern a living creature. No 
wood is near, no sheltering crags. The air is hid- 
eously still, perhaps before some coming hurricane, 
A snake glides out from under a stone ; and with 
instinctive fear, and the aversion which there is 
between man and that reptile, you strike it with 
your stick. It lies dying on the ground. If you 
are a denizen of those regions, you look round upon 
the whole horizon for something to come ; and it 
does come. Slowly, from a distant point, there 
rises a hideous, ungainly bird, the gallinazo, which, 
wheeling round in circles, swoops down upon the 
snake almost before you have had time to move 
away. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 211 

That is just to my mind what there Is at present 
in the politics of the world. At the stillest moment, 
on the smallest cause of encounter, wherever there 
is the slightest prospect of misfortune, this obscene 
bird of war is ready to sweep down upon the spot. 
Its perception of prey is super-human : it is sure to 
be present where there is any, the least, hope of 
evil. 

Second Lawyer. Yes, sir ; but how is this evil 
to be prevented ? What is the good of pretending 
peace when there is no peacefulness } 

The Author. I tell you what will happen some 
day. If scientific men really give their minds to 
the destruction of their fellow-creatures, they will 
invent something which will throw all your Arm- 
strong guns into shade. I believe in the virtues of 
Lord Dundonald's discovery. If I had made any 
similar discovery, I really think I should have told 
it openly to the world, in the hope that the easy 
destructibility of human beings might put a stop to 
this mania for destruction. Some day there will 
come the knowledge of the means of creating a 
pestilence. 

Second Lawyer, This is a pleasant look-out for 
the human race. But I am by no means sure that 
this gentleman is not right. I should be sorry, 



212 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

Serjeant, to be tempted with the knowledge of 
some vapor which could destroy, in a moment, all 
my seniors at the bar. I suppose, though, I should 
never use it, for fear of its being used against me by 
my juniors ; and the knowledge that there was such 
a vapor in everybody's power would make every- 
body very civil to everybody else. 

T/ie AutJior. You will think me, perhaps, a 
very fanciful and romantic person ; but my wonder 
is, and always has been, that our knowledge of 
astronomy, only gained in comparatively modern 
times, has not dwarfed and crushed ambition. It 
is such a little bit of a thing, this earth. What is 
there to make one desirous, wading through fire 
and water and blood, to reign over any part of it? 
It was different vvhen men believed it to be the 
abode of gods and demi-gods, and that it was the 
only created thing of any magnitude. 

Sickly Youth. Sirius is said to be about a mil- 
lion of miles in diameter : {the lady looked at him 
very proudly) . 

The Author. Yes, it is. But I would also rely 
upon other facts and conjectures. You see it is 
now conjectured that there have been a series of 
deluges, and that there will be, at no very distant 
time, a sweeping off again of us little, cantanker- 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 213 

ous, quarrelsome men into the depths of the 
sea. 

The Lady. Pardon me for repeating that, if 
we women ruled affairs, even If we did not know 
these learned conclusions (and certainly I never 
knew them before to-day), we should not be so 
quarrelsome as you gentlemen are ; for are we not 
more prudent and homely ? 

JP'irst Lawyer {turning to me). Bless my 
neart, sir ; some two or three thousand people know 
what you and I know about these scientific matters, 
and you suppose that such an inconsiderable num- 
ber can Influence the whole world. 

Second Lawyer. I do not know why they 
should not. 

TTie AufJior. If there were organization — 

The Statesman. The week's business is enough 
for the week ; and, as to looking much further, 
that Is what neither statesmen nor stockbrokers 
ever do. 

The Author. That is just what I complain of, 
and what I believe this writer Is aiming at. 

Second Lawyer. You seem always to be ready 
to defend the writer. You must be a great friend 
of his. Do you know him .? 

The Author. A little. But I am any thing but 



214 i:SSAT ON ORGANIZATION. 

a friend of his, — one of his worst enemies, per- 
haps his chief one. 

77ie Statesma7i. Well, I see we should never 
agree on these great subjects which he has sug- 
gested to us ; but I do thoroughly agree with what 
he says about the organization of pleasure. The 
head of my office once said, " Life would be very 
tolerable if it were not for its pleasures." Is not 
that a witty saying.? and so true. By the way, I 
don't think you would get such a brilliant 7not out 
of any of those American regiments that are to 
furnish Councils and Cabinets and Congresses. 

Second Lawyer. And perhaps Courts. Do not 
forget that. 

First Lawyer. I, too, think the part about pleas- 
ure not bad. But this lady, like the rest of her sex, 
is, I doubt not, one of the guilty persons in the 
great offence of making pleasure so uncomfortable. 
Pray, madam, why do you all crowd your parties 
in the way you do } Why do you have a dancing- 
tea at which one cannot dance } 

Second Lawyer. Yes, madam, I must follow on 
the same side. Why do you have a dancing-tea at 
which my learned friend cannot dance, I ask } 

The Lady. I can answer that question. It is 
because you gentlemen make business enter into all 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 215 

pleasures. " If you ask the So-and-soes, my dear, 
you must ask the Thises and the Thats." The 
obedient wife does ask the Thises and the Thats ; 
and there is an unpleasant crowd. 

First Lawyer. Upon my word, madam, there 
is no use in arguing with you. You always con- 
quer us, else perhaps I could say something about 
dress. 

The Lady. Pray say It, sir ; or rather pray do 
not say it, for I think I know pretty well all that 
you will say. The truth is, we are foolish ; you are 
foolish ; everybody, I believe, is foolish in dress ; 
and the silliest people in the world guide us all in 
this matter, and set the fashions. 

First Lawyer. Well, madam, you have at least 
made a candid confession. 

But I see that, while we have been talking, you 
have been looking at the essay. What do you 
think of it ? 

The Lady. There is a great deal I don't under- 
stand ; but there is one thing I like, and that is, that 
the author always takes his examples from common 
life. I can't help fancying that I was at that great 
festivity he speaks of, where it was so difficult to 
get away. I had two gentlemen to assist me, and 
they were four hours hunting after the carriage ; 



2l6 i:SSAT ON ORGANIZATION. 

and at last they did not find it, but I found it 
myself. 

I^irsf Lawyer. Dark carriage, of course, ma*am ? 
Now if you had had cream-color picked out with 
red, you would have found it in a quarter of an 
hour. 

The Lady. Yes ; but one would be so stared 
at in such a carriage. 

First Lawyer, It may be unfortunate for you, 
ma'am ; but you will always be stared at. (^Here 
he gave a self-satisfied smile., as if he felt that he 
had now said a really pretty thing: we laughed., 
a?zd the lady blushed and smiled.) 

The Author {addressing the lady). I am sure 
the essayist would be much obliged to you for your 
approval of common instances. I, too, am quite 
with him and with you in this matter. What is 
the good of bringing in Hannibal and the Alps, or 
the battle of Marathon, the choice of Hercules, or 
the retreat of the Ten Thousand, to illustrate some- 
thing which can be well shown by Hodge in the 
hay-field ? 

What grand examples have been brought forward 
to illustrate the intense intolerance of human nature ! 
the fate of the Waldenses ; the Albigenses ; the 
Lollards ; the Wickliffites ! None of them afford so 



CONVERSATION IN A BAIL WAT CARRIAGE. 21 7 

good an instance as a simple story I know about 
mustard, which I have heard told at dinner-tables 
amidst roars of laughter. 

Statesman. Pray tell it us, sir. 

First Lawyer. A good story is one of the bless- 
ings of life. 

The Author. A good story once, I think, saved 
my life. 

Seco7td Lawyer. This is wandering from the 
subject. 

First Lawyer. Oh, hang the subject! You 
clever young men are so pedantic. 

The Author. Well, I will not tell the story my- 
self, but will describe another person telling it, — the 
witty and scientific L . 

He would ask us, generally at dinner-time, h 
prof OS of mustard, whether we had heard his story 
about that much-approved condiment. Those who 
had not heard it said " No," and begged to hear it ; 
and those who had heard it clamored to hear it 
again. Upon this he would send the servant for a 
Times newspaper, and, when he had got it, would 
thus begin : — 

We are at a coffee-house. You, Jones \choosing 
some one who had heard the story before']^ are 



2l8 JiSSAT ON ORGANIZATION. 

having your dinner brought upon the table, — a juicy, 
beefsteak. I have just finished mine at the same 
table. I look off from my paper, and pass the mus- 
tard to you. You must always decline. 

I, . Mustard, sir ? 

Jones. Thank you {but does not take it). 

L {Looking baffled^ and cross, reads on a 

little^ . You will take mustard, sir ? 

Jones. No, thank you, I don't. 

Z- {After 7nore impatieizt reading, and 

glancing round his faper to feep at Jones). 
Most persons take mustard, sir, with beefsteak. 

Jones. I seldom or never do, sir. 

L {Attempts to get interested in a rail- 

ivay accident, and mutters, *' Three lives lost, — 
the stoker escaped by a miracle. No blame can be 
attached to a7iy of the officers of the Company?* 

L continues to look round his paper over and 

over again at Jones. At last he exclai?ns an- 
grily :) It Is a most extraordinary thing, sir, not 
to eat mustard with beefsteak. / never did such a 
thing In my life. 

Jones {calmly). Perhaps n.ot. 

L ( Turns to his paper, and attempts again 

to read, but manifests a state of strong excite- 
ment. Once or twice he stretches out his hand^ 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 219 

and withdraws it again. At last he can hear it 
no longer. He throivs down the Times; and^ 
taking uf the mustard-pot., exclaims:^ Damn it, 
sir, you must and shall have mustard ! {a7id he 
dazibs yones's ;plate over with it). 

The company, servants, and all, are convulsed 

with laughter ; and L resumes his dinner v^ith 

all the air of a triumphant anecdote-teller after a 
great success. 

Now, I ask you, is not that the best story to illus- 
trate the intense intolerance of human nature you 
ever heard ? Have you not all found that everybody 
is anxious to force his mustard upon your beef, 
whether you like it or not? That story contains 
eighty-three sermons. 

First Lawyer. And a hundred and thirty-five 
essays. 

The Author. And two hundred charges to the 
Grand Jury. But now I will be as serious as you 
like, and go back into the subject, and please this 
gentleman. 

The Lady. I believe it is I who desei-ve to be 
scolded as the cause of this digression, in praising 
the author for having taken his instances from com- 
mon life. 



220 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

The Statesma7i. There are some instances 
which he has failed to take, and which, to my 
mind, would have been better than any he has 
taken. 

The Ordnance Survey ought to have been given 
as an admirable instance of organization. 

Jf'irst Lawyer. Stop. Let us each give an 
instance. ( We all agreed^ Well, I say nowhere 
is organization more wanted than at a public meet- 
ing. All goes wrong if two or three clever fellows 
have not met before, and drawn up all the resolu- 
tions, with a paper of agenda for the chairman. 
At the meeting every thing must go like clock-work. 
Who is to propose, and who is to second, a resolu- 
tion, must be absolutely settled. There must be no 
detestable modesty of people conspicuously bowing 
to one another, and saying, " No, sir, not I : I am 
not of importance enough in the county," &c., &c. 
The meeting must go off swiftly and cheerfully ; 
and that can only be done by previous organization. 

The Author. Very true. I will give you 
another instance, — a wedding breakfast. Even 
that miserable transaction may be made to go off 
well, if the proceedings have been well arranged 
beforehand, and there are no dreary intei-vals 
allowed for tears. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 221 

The Lady. Then, a musical party. How that 
mostly fails for want of some despotic person to 
arrange beforehand everything that shall be done ; so 
that there may be no weak consultations round the 
piano, or wishes expressed that there had been 
some " part music " there which is not there. 

Second Lawyer. And a consultation at a lead- 
ing counsel's chambers. 

First Laxvyer. No, no: we won't have any 
reference to the shop : but it is not a bad instance 
though. 

Sickly Touth. And a paper-chase at school over 
difficult country. 

First Lawyer. Well done, my man : yours is a 
very good instance ; and I tell you this, — that the 
boy who had run well across country, and had 
shown great judgment in baffling his pursuers at a 
paper-chase, should have a lot of marks for it at 
any examination at Woolwich, if I were an exami- 
ner. But I am afraid, my good fellow, you would 
have been rather out of place at such a run. 

Sickly Touth. I was always consulted, though, 
by the " foxes " beforehand ; and so I got the nick- 
name of " the lame old fox." 

First Lawyer. Well, we have all given our in- 
stances ; and the}^ are not to be despised, I think. 



222 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

But now, if you will allow me, I will take up 
another part of the essay, and tell you something 
that Sir Wm. Follett once said to me. Give me 
the book. This is the passage : it is where the 
•author is speaking of the qualities of a good organ- 
izer. " It must take some time to ascertain of any 
man that he is clear and constant in his main pur- 
pose, and is not to be led away from it by the 
dexterous fulfilment of smaller ends and aims." 

I doubt whether the man himself sees all that 
there is in that passage. 

T/ze AutJior. Why should he not have seen it, 
as this passage suggested the idea to you } But per- 
haps he did not. However, what did Sir Wm. 
Follett say? 

First Lawyer. "Remember that every piece 
of business is involved in difficulties, and that a 
great difference between a good and a bad legal 
practitioner consists in the ability or disability to 
estimate the practical value of the difficulties, and 
to dismiss from his thoughts those that he does not 
feel to be of practical importance." 

The Statesma7t. It is wonderfully good ; and 
all the more so, that it seems but commonplace. 
The sense of proportion is wanting in most of our 
minds when we come to deal with difficulties. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 223 

The Author. I am entirely with you. Three 
difficulties are started. Two of them, perhaps, 
are practically unimportant ; but we are apt to think 
that they are respectively equal in value to the third, 
because each of them takes up as much room in our 
mind at the moment as the third does. The two 
difficulties, which may be unimportant in life, are 
important, logically speaking; and so sometimes 
they have a most unjustifiable hold upon us. 

The Statesman. Yes, a great business is 
delayed sometimes because some difficult point, 
which is in every sense but a point, cannot be 
settled. 

First Lawyer. I have known an expense of 
several pounds incurred in replying to a requisition 
that the title to a rent should be proved strictly, the 
rent being one penny a year for less than ninety- 
nine years, and forming, by accident, part of a 
large property which was to be mortgaged. These 
things are the opprobrium of law. 

The Author. No, ijo ; you are too hard upon- 
law. I would rather say these things are the 
opprobrium of life ; for we are all greatly deficient 
in that just sense of proportion which this gentle- 
man insisted upon. 

The Statesman. I have something to say on the 



224 USSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

general subject, which has struck me : it is not 
deep, but I think it is important. The writer leads 
ns naturally to consider various kinds of organiz- 
ation. Now it appears to me, after going over 
several notorious instances of mal-organization, that 
the error consists in not having considered from the 
first what a serious thing organization is. " Oh ! 
that will do for the beginning," men say ; " we can 
alter afterwards." But they do?z^t alter afterwards ; 
and the organization grinds on, assumes a powerful 
name, becomes a great system almost before you 
are aware : and it is very difficult to make the thing 
ungrind. 

The Author. Ah ! the beginning of every thing 
is solemn. Now I am delighted to find, — I am 
afraid I shall be scolded by this gentleman for 
wandering again from the point, — but I say I am 
delighted to find that poets and painters are discover- 
ing that the break of day is not joyous, but, rather, 
awful. "Jocund" is not a good adjective for morn. 

** Advancing, strewed the earth with orient pearls." 

What are the lines, young gentleman } \tur7is to the 
sickly youth. '\ You know them I dare say: that's 
the advantage of being young ; one has learnt every 
thing lately. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 225 

Sickly Touth. 

"Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime 
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearls.'* 

Not "strewed" but "sow'd." 

The Author. Instead of all that, the morn seems 
to me to come in so mournfully. There are the 
slight, streaky clouds, that are to become ominous in 
an hour or two, and are to fall in the course of the 
next twelve hours ; throughout nature there is an 
unpleasant, nervous stillness ; there is a depressing 
blankness of color ; and, altogether, the day seems 
to be saying, " Here am I, about to bring much 
trouble and tribulation to most persons, and a little 
content — only to those who are already contented." 

The Statesman. You don't take a cheerful view 
of life, sir. 

First Lawyer. I would rather go back to the 
essay, I think. What do you say, madam? 

The Lady. We ladies are generally said to like 
what is sentimental and melancholy; but I am 
quite contented to go back to the essay. 

Second Lawyer. One of the great difficulties 
under which it will labor, as regards popular accep- 
tation, is that most people are so apt to connect 
organization in their minds with centralization. 
IS 



226 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

Now, of course, a man may organize with a view 
to decentralization. 

The Author. I think, sir, the author should 
feel very grateful to you for pointing out a miscon- 
ception which is very likely to arise. 

J^irst Lawyer. I think, however, the author 
would not be so much obliged to my learned friend 
for pointing out, as he did at the beginning of the 
conversation, that when the author speaks of organ- 
ization, the simple word " plan " might as well 
have been used. For my own part, I feel that some 
part of the essay (and the part I like best) might 
simply be resolved into this, — that men do not ask 
themselves what they mean by doing a thing. It is 
so often that they imitate, when they should act 
independently. Now I will take you into a 
subject which has apparently little to do with what 
we have been discussing ; but yet I can see that 
the author, in one particular Instance, has had it 
in his mind. I take Color as my subject. It has 
always appeared to me that, especially in this 
country, colors are laid on without any view to the 
purposes for which they are used. You see every- 
where the darkest colors emplo3^ed, where light 
colors should be chosen if there were any reason- 
ing at all upon the subject. Now a light color 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 227 

wears best, and is the most distinguishable ; yet 
you will find that dark colors are greatly used 
for boundaries, which of course are better the 
more distinguishable they are. This is the case 
with the palisading of all our great towns. I 
believe, if you were to examine into the cause, 
it would be nothing more or less than fashion. 
Oddly enough, the idea of gentility has been 
associated with darkness of color ; and this idea 
has pervaded the whole country. Much, there- 
fore, of what the essayist has been protesting 
against, is merely the result of people continuing 
to do something without a sufficient reason. 

The Statesman. The passport system, which 
he alluded to, is a good instance of that. By 
the way, the essay must have been written some 
time ago, at least before the French Emperor 
took such a wise step as he did towards abol- 
ishing passports. 

Second Lawyer. And before the American 
President introduced them. 

The Author. I *gree with much of what 
these learned gentlemen have said : indeed, I 
have always maintained that half the work of 
the world is useless ; that it cannot give a good 
account of itself, if subjected to severe scrutiny. 



228 JESS AY ON ORGANIZATION. 

My idea of organization would be to diminish much 
of this useless work. I always think of the boy * 
who was employed at certain intervals to open a 
valve, or shut a valve, or something of that kind, in 
some complicated machinery ; and who found that 
by attaching a string to two pieces of the machinery 
the purpose was effected, and he was left to play 
at marbles. There is a result of skilful organ- 
ization in the saving of trouble. 

The Statesntan. Of course a thing may be 
elaborate, but yet mal-organized. That is the case 
with pleasures. You see I like to return to that 
branch of the subject. The pains taken about 
pleasure are excessive : the results are dolorous. 

Now, there is a great fuss being made about the 
question of education just at present. It is one of 
the subjects omitted, or, rather, slightly treated, by 
the essayist ; and yet perhaps it opens the widest 
field for wise organization. 

The Author. It is a bold thing in me to say ; 
but I do think there are the most enormous errors 
afloat about education. 

• Second Lawyer, There must be enormous 
errors in a subject which is the greatest in the 

* The Author had forgotten that he had used this 
illustration in the essay; but it was not noticed. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 229 

world except war ; and it Is not likely that man- 
kind have hit off the right thing at once. But pray 
tell us, sir, any one of these large errors. 

The Author. Well, I think, then, that we mis- 
construe the results that we get from inspection and 
examination. I will explain what I mean. 

You must all have read or heard of the answer 
which was given by a child of eleven years of age 
to the question " What is thy duty towards thy 
neighbor ? " 

I^irst Lawyer. Oh, yes, I remember laughing 
heartily over it. I have forgotten the words 
though. 

The Author. I think I can recollect the first 
part of it. " My dooty tords my nabers, is to love 
him as thyself, and to do to all men as I wed thou 
shall do und to me, to love, onner, and suke my 
farther and mother, to onner and to bay the Qiieen, 
and all that are pet in a forty under her, to smit 
myself to all my goones, teachers, sportial pastures 
and marsters." 

Now I have studied that answer very carefully, 
and I maintain that there is no reason for thinking 
that the child did not understand its duty towards 
its neighbor very well, — as well perhaps as the 
witty and accomplished inspector who examined the 



230 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

child. Consider the words. When the child said 
that it was its duty " to onner and to bay the Queen, 
and all that are pet in a forty under her," don't you 
think that the child had sufficient knowledge in that 
matter for all practical purposes.? Omit the words 
" in a forty," which perhaps conveyed but a dim 
idea of " in authority " to the child, is there not 
enough left to show that the child understood that 
it was to obey the Queen, and the clergyman of the 
parish, and the neighboring justice of the peace, 
and the parish constable.? Again, when it used 
the words " sportial pastures and marsters," do you 
doubt that it included the master of the school ; and 
so on, throughout? The main sense of the passage 
may have been thoroughly in the child's mind. 

T^e Statesma7t. The vice of the age is an 
unwholesome belief in examinations. 

TJie Author. I am rather disposed to agree 
with you. 

Second Lawyer. I don't: I believe examina- 
tions have already done a great deal of good. 

The Author. Now I am going to ask you all a 
question, and I hope you will give me a true 
answer. 

The Lady. That would be a large promise 
to make, sir. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 23 1 

Second Lazuyer. Well, I dare say we shall 
answer it truly, if it is not a very unpleasant ques- 
tion. 

The AutJior. When you were very juvenile, 
and were asked, " Who was the father of Zebedee's 
children ? " did you answer the question directly, or 
indeed could you answer it at all ? 

Now I do not believe that I am inferior to the 
average of mankind. They think a good deal of 
me in my parish, and I was very near being made 
a justice of the peace. I am a Tithing-man, if you 
know what that is, which is more than I do, though 
I hold the office. \_They all laughed.'\ 

Well, I confess that when a burly man dressed in 
black, virith a huge bunch of seals dangling from 
his fob (for that was the fashion in my young days) , 
called me to him, unfortunately just after my fond 
father had been praising my remarkable abilities, 
and in a pompous voice said, " Well, young gentle- 
man, and who was the father of Zebedee's chil- 
dren?" I was nonplussed. I turned over in my 
juvenile mind every thing I had read a.nd heard 
about Zebedee ; but this important fact respecting 
the paternity of Zebedee's children had hitherto 
escaped my attention. I thought it was a very deep 
question. I imagined that I must be shamefully 

\ 



232 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

ignorant of Scripture history. I was mortified ; 
my father looked mortified ; and I slunk away as a 
little ignoramus who had been much overpraised 
by a fond parent. Now did any of you fare any 
better ? 

First Lazvyer. I am not sure that I could 
answer the question now ; but I have no doubt that 
I disgraced myself when it was asked me some 
fifty years ago. 

Second Lawyer, And I too. 

The Statesman. And I. 

The Author, And you, madam.? 

The Lady, I believe I answered it. 

The Author, Well, but you women are so 
prematurely clever : as Henry Taylor says, you 
grow on the sunny side of the wall. If you were 
asked the question at eleven years of age, you were 
equal to us at fourteen. 

Well, young gentleman, and you.? 

Sickly Youth, Oh ! I didn't. 

The Author, It appears that a large majority 
of us ought to be very tender and tolerant in con- 
sidering any answers made by children of eleven 
years of age. 

But, to consider the matter more seriously, I 
repeat that I quite agree with this gentleman (the 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 233 

Statesman) about the over-weight given to exami- 
nations in modern times. Take your own craft: 
do you think that you would have found out the 
exact merits of Lord Pahnerston, Lord Russell, 
Lord Granville, Lord Derby, Mr. Disraeli, and 
Mr. Gladstone, by examination? Do you think 
they would haye held their proper places in an 
examination ? 

The Statsman. They would not have been low 
down. 

Second Lawyer. I am not sure of that. 

The Author. Nor I ; there is a certain indo- 
cility in the minds of men who have much in them. 
But what I mean is much more than that. Mr. 
Carlyle has said that Genius consists in an immense 
capacity for taking trouble. 

First Lawyer. That is against you : those who 
succeed in examinations have taken a great deal 
of trouble. 

Second Lawyer. Decidedly. 

The Author. Ah ! but I don't mean to abide 
by his definition: I mean to carry the definition 
a step or two higher. I say that it consists in an 
immense capacity for taking interest ; and, when 
applied to statesmanship, in taking interest in 
many things. Also, in courage. 



234 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

Now, where was the source of Pitt's greatness? 
Surely there were many men of his day a great 
deal cleverer than he was, but few there were who 
felt so deeply for England, or cared so much for 
any matter that they had in hand. 

Circumstances which I need not mention made 
me early acquainted with Pitt's mode of working. 
It was intense. It is quite true, as stated in the 
essay, that he would shut himself up for hours with 
a bill, and the men who knew any thing about it ; 
and so he would master the bill. I maintain that 
you cannot find out this spirit in a man by examina- 
tion. And how, I would ask, can you find out 
about a man's courage by examination.? And 
courage, moral courage, is one of the highest and 
rarest qualities in the transaction even of ordinary 
business. 

First Lawyer, I don't agree with you at all. 
This capacity for taking interest, and this courage,' 
I contend, are to some extent shown hi the acquisi- 
tion of knowledge. Well, then, I say the knowledge 
in itself is valuable. Consider what little time any 
of us have, after our first youth, for learning any 
thing. 

Of course, you don't find out the whole nature of 
a man by examining him in French, Latin, History, 



■CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 235 

or Mathematics ; but you find out something which 
in my judgment requires to be found out. 

In no service will the advantage of this system of 
examination be more discernible than in the army. 

I believe that already I can see great improve- 
ment there among the young men. 

The Author. Well, all I can say is, that the 
system requires to be very carefully watched. We 
must not suppose that the whole man is found out 
by an examination. Success in an examination must 
not be allowed to have too much influence after- 
wards. 

First Lawyer. It will not. In life, men favor 
others according as they find them serviceable. 
Attorneys do not ask whether I took honors or 
not, but whether there is a chance of my getting a 
verdict. To myself, it is a great advantage that I 
learnt a little mathematics when I was young, in 
order to get a good place at an examination. I am 
sure I should never have known any thing about 
them otherwise. 

Second Lawyer. But now, to come back to 
organization, — for I am always bringing you back 
to that subject, — what are its functions in social 
matters, such as education and sanitary work? 

The Author. Well, the main functions are 



236 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION, 

clear. There are things which government can do, 
and ought to do, and which individuals, or small 
communities, cannot. You must so organize as to 
contrive that local authorities shall not hang upon 
the government, and that government shall do its 
own especial work, which may justly be very small, 
and yet may be most important. 

The States?naii. This is a little vague, sir. 

The Author, Try me in any particular instance. 

The States?nan. There is a sudden outbreak of 
fever in a town. 

The Author. Well, if there is any thing re- 
markable about it, the government may send down 
to inspect, and then aid the town with that special 
knowledge which must be greatest at the centre of 
affairs. But upon the local authority must be 
thrown the responsibility of removing the causes 
of the fever, if those causes can be discovered. 

One of the greatest triumphs of organization 
must be justly to divide governmental from local 
action. 

The States?nan, But in education what do 
you say? 

The Author, I merely say this, that the want 
of education is a want which can never be so easily 
perceived by the mass of men as the want of good 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 237 

air, good water, and good drainage. And there- 
fore there requires just that degree of additional 
governmental aid which would counterbalance the 
additional difficulty created by the want of percep- 
tion of the good to be aimed at, or the evil to be 
avoided. 

T/ie Statesman. I believe this is all true ; but 
how difficult it is to work up to these nice boun- 
daries in practice. The moment you have any 
system organized, it is eager to extend beyond its 
just boundaries. 

The Author. Then that is spurious organiza- 
tion ; or rather it is organization which is incom- 
plete because it does not provide the necessary 
checks upon its own action. You come at last to 
this : that if you would rightly organize any thing 
which has life in it, such as a community of men, 
you must have a living organization which can 
vary, withhold, or rescind all that is merely formu- 
lary, and that depends solely upon rules. When 
a monarchy, or a republic, or a church, or a system 
of education, falls into decay, it is because the 
organization has not been renewed from the foun- 
tain of its being, and is partially a dead thing. It 
is imitative and formal, not creative. If it grows, 
it is but in one direction : it is dead somewhere. 



238 ESSAY OX ORGANIZATION. 

Why do these railways fail, which this learned 
gentleman is so bitter against? Because there is 
not enouo^h of new mind thrown into the workino^ 
of them. 

Second Lawyer. There is one idea which this 
essayist seems never to have entertained ; namely, 
that organization may be used for very bad pur- 
poses, and that the growth and success of one 
form of organization may be fatal to many others 
that would have been preferable to it. 

The Statesman. He must have thought of 
that : it is as obvious as daylight. All the great 
tyrannies that have arisen in the world, whether 
priestly, imperial, or democratic, have all arisen 
from some one department of human affairs being 
well organized, and being surrounded by feeble 
organisms. 

First Lawyer. The press furnishes another 
instance. 

The Author. Yes : if you were to have a pre- 
dominant newspaper in a colony, supremely well- 
organized, of course its tendency would be most 
dangerous. There would be so little established 
that could check it. 

The Statesman. The danger from the press, not 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 239 

SO much to freedom of thought as to independence 
of thought, is most formidable everywhere. 

First Lawyer. The hardship to individuals is 
frightful to contemplate. 

I was engaged in a case some time ago in which 
a good, simple, trusting individual, my client, had 
been done out of 600/. or 700/. In some way the 
case came before the courts, though I believe my 
client would have been delighted to pay the money 
for the experience, and never to have heard a word 
more about the matter. In two or three days' time 
out came a flaming article in a leading journal, 
taking for its text the innocent folly of my trustful 
client. I could, not help feeling what an over- 
severe punishment it was. 

Second Lawyer. Yes. I hold with the nigger 
who said, " If preachy, preachy ; if floggy, floggy : 
but not preachy and floggy too, Massa." 

The Author, That is exactly it. A poor devil 
now gets both "preachy" and "floggy" too, even 
for an innocent blunder 

I was very much struck the other day, in taking 
up a newspaper, to see that three out of four of the 
leading articles were comments upon private per- 
sons, and private affairs. This will gradually 
become a thorough invasion of the liberty of the 



24° ESSAY ON organization: 

subject. I am quite of the opinion of a man who 
is said by those who know him to be one of the 
wisest of our generation. 

" I should hate," he said, " in short, to Hve in a 
land where men should act in multitudes, and think 
in multitudes, and be free in multitudes." 

T/ie Statesman. And then, too, accusations are 
made which are not merely inaccurate, but abso- 
lutely aimed at the wrong person. Of course in 
official life I have seen that. I have seen article 
after article come out in a leading newspaper 
against a man, for something which he had no more 
to do with than I had. I remember, when I was 
a juvenile in office, saying to a certain statesman 
who was undergoing this blackening, " Why, my 
lord, do you not write a letter to the paper, and tell 
them that you are not the man ? " He smiled and 
replied, " Don't you see I should be always writing 
letters } Cannot you imagine that the next accusa- 
tion which might be brought against me, I might 
not be able to explain without implicating other 
people, or betraying the intentions of the Govern- 
ment .^^ You, too, my young friend," continued the 
old statesman, " may have plenty of this sort of 
thing to endure in the course of your life ; and you 
must learn to endure it, and work on patiently." 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 24 1 

I have been too obscure to have had much occasion 
to prove the soundness of his advice ; but I hope 
if I had been much abused, I should have learnt 
to hold my tongue under it. 

The Author. What I am always afraid of is, 
that, at some critical juncture of our affairs, the 
officers in command will not be thinking so much 
of answering for their deeds to the Government 
at home, as to the writers of leading articles. We 
may not always have Dukes of Wellington to 
command our armies, and we may lose a cam- 
paign by the susceptibility to newspaper comments 
of officers high in command. 

Second Lawyer. Well, but what can organiza- 
tion do in this matter.? 

The Statesma7z. Nothing more, I suppose, 
than organize opposition to the great powers of the 
press, whatever they may be. 

First Lawyer, Yes. Encourage in every way 
any publication which shows signs of indepen- 
dent thought. Now there is a review which I 
delight in (though I know it meant me the 
other day when it was wa-iting about a certain 
Serjeant Bluster), because it always barks on 
the other side to the great barker, and so we 

get some chance of freedom. 
16 



242 ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION. 

The Author. I quite sympathize with you. 
I was rejoiced to find, from a friend who 
takes great interest in such matters, that the 
sale of some of the newspapers which have no 
great name, one of which was absolutely un- 
known to me, is enormous. There, I thought 
to myself, is a chance of some counterpoise. 

I think the admirable way in which, for the 
most part, the leading portion of the press in 
England is conducted, tends greatly to disguise 
the danger there is in it to independence of 
thought and action. In America the present 
evil is greater ; but the danger of future evil 
may be less. However, this is too large a 
subject for us to attempt to discuss fully unless 
we were all going to the Hebrides together. 

The Lady. I must say, that I think we 
women care much less about newspaper articles 
than you gentlemen. I often have to console 
my husband \ph^ she is 7narried then\ when 
something is written against him in the news- 
papers ; and I generally persuade him that 
some little domestic matter is far more impor- 
tant to us. They might write leading articles 
against me from morning till night, if I could 
always manage my cook well. 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 243 

First Lawyer, Yes. It is all very well, 
ma'am ; but you do not govern, — at least osten- 
sibly, — or plead, or preach, or command armies, 
or conduct diplomacy ; otherwise you would not 
make so light of the power of the press. I 
believe that those ladies who do come before 
the public, such as actresses and singers and 
female artists and authors, are quite as sensi- 
tive to newspaper comment as we are. 

The Lady. I doubt it, but I cannot really 
answer for them. 

Second Lawyer, How did we get into this 
discussion about the press.'* 

The Statesman, As an instance of dangerous 
organization ; and some one said that the author 
never seemed to contemplate the possibility of 
dangerous organization. 

The Author. I have always divided mankind 
into two great classes. The one consists of 
men who seem to be isolated from the human 
race, and who make the most of every thing 
that goes ill, public or private. The other con- 
sists of men who seem to feel strongly the 
affinity of the rest of the human race to them- 
selves ; who make the best of every thing they 
come in contact with ; and who rather wish 



244 ESSAY ON organization: 

well than otherwise to all forms of human 
endeavor. These main divisions predominate 
over all diversities of temperament, and even 
of disposition. For instance, a man shall be 
selfish or egotistical, and yet belong to the 
second great division. I always fancy that this 
depends upon an innate perception of some 
central truth concerning the fortunes of the 
human race, and of how, in some mysterious 
way, all of us as individuals partake these 
fortunes. As I flatter myself that I belong to 
the second division before referred to, I can 
easily comprehend how the essayist has omitted 
to dwell upon the evil uses of organization. He 
probably thought that organization, if improved, 
would be sure to further the welfare of mankind, 
thinking, for his own part, chiefly of the good 
uses. I should have made the same mistake 
myself. 

Second Lawyer. It is an oversight, however 
skilfully or romantically you may endeavor to 
account for it. 

First Lawyer. Well, we must admit that 
there is nothing like discussion for making time 
pass. We have been talking over this dull subject 
without feeling dulness ; and here we are at Bore- 



CONVERSATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE. 245 

don, where they will give us what they fondly 
and delusively call a dinner. 



We got out at Boredon, which was the station 
for my departure by another train ; so I took leave 
of my companions, feeling somewhat pleased that 
I had made a battle for my offspring. But that 
Second Lawyer is a pestilent fellow for dividing 
and defining. He will find out a great many 
faults in the essay when it is published, and will 
show them up in some review or other. And 
there will be a great deal of justice in what he 
will say. It is almost impossible to keep one's 
language quite correct in discussing a subject that 
enters in such a mixed manner into so many and 
such various human affairs. However, they may 
criticize as they like, they will not persuade me 
that we could not organize a great deal more 
skilfully than we are in the habit of doing, and 
that organization is not one of the most remuner- 
ative products of the human mind. 



Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by John Wilson & Son. 



ARTHUR HELPS'S WRITINGS. 



1. REALMAH. A Story. Price $2.00. 

2. CASIMIR MAREMMA. A Novel. Price $2.00. 

3. COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. Price $1.50. 

4. ESSAYS WRITTEN IN THE INTERVALS OF BUS 

INESS. Price $1.50. 
«f. BREVIA Short Essays and Aphorisms. Price $1.50. 

From the London Review. 

•• The tale (Realmah) is a comparatively brief one, intersected by the 
conversations of a variety of able personages, with most of whose names 
and characters we are already familiar through ' Friends in Council.* 
Looking at it in connection with the social and political lessons that are 
wrapt up in it, we may fairly attribute to it a higher value tlian could pes* 
sibly attach to a common piece of nction." 

From a Notice by Miss E. M, Converse, 

"There are many reasons why we like this irregular book (Realmah), in 
which we should find the dialogue tedious without the story; the story dull 
without the dialogue ; and the whole unmeaning, unless we discerned the 
purpose of the author underlying the lines, and interweaving, now here, 
now there, a criticism, a suggestion, an aphorism^ a quaint illustration, an 
exhortation, a metaphysical deduction, or a moral inference. 

" We like a book in which we are not bound to read consecutively, whose 
leaves we can turn at pleasure and find on every page something to amuse, 
interest, and instruct. It is like a charming walk in the woods in early 
summer, where we are attracted now to a lowly flower half hidden under 
soft moss ; now to a shrub brilliant with showy blossoms ; now to the gran- 
deur of a spreading tree ; now to a bit o*" 6eecy cloud ; and now to the blue 
of the overarching sky. 

We gladly place * Realmah ' on the * book-lined wall,' by the side of 



From a Notice by Miss H, W. Preston. 
*' It must be because the reading world is unregenerate that Arthur Helps 
Is not a general favorite. Somebody once said (was it Ruskin, at whose 
imperious order so many of us read ' Friends in Council,' a dozen years 
ago?) that appreciation of Helps is a sure test of culture. Not so much 
that, one may suggest, as of a certain native fineness and excellence of 
mind. The impression prevails among some of those who do not read hin:, 
that Helps is a hard writer. Nothing could be more erroneous. His man- 
ner is simplicity itself; his speech always winning, and of a silvery dis- 
tinctness. There are hosts of ravenous readers, lively and capable, who, 
if their vague prejudice were removed, would exceedingly enjoy the gentle 
wit, the unassuming wisdom, and the refreshing originality of the author 
in question. There are men and women, mostly young, with souls that 
sometimes weary of the serials, who need nothing so much as a persuasive 
guide to the study of worthier and more enduring literature. For most of 
those who read novels with avidity are capable of reading something else 
with avidity, if they only knew it. And such a guide, and pleasantest of all 
auch gxiides, is Artliur Helps. * * Yet 'Casinrir Marenima' is a charming 
book, and, better still, invigorating. Try it. You are going into tlie country 
for the summer months that remain. Have ' Casimir ' with you, and have 
' Realmah,' too. The former is the pleasanter book, the latter the more pow- 
erful. But if you like one you will like the other. At the least you will rise 
from their perusal witla a grateful sense of having been received for a time 
into a select and happy circle, where intellectual breeding is perfect, and the 
struggle for brilliancy unknown. 

Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, on receipr of adver* 
tised price, by the Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MARGARET. 

By Sylvester Judd. One volume. Price $1.50. 

SELECTIONS FROM SOME NOTABLE REVIEWS. 
From the Southern Qtuirterly Review. 
'* This book, more than any other that we have read, leads us to believe in the 

S>ssibility of a distinctive American Literature. ... It bears the impress of New 
ngland upon all its features. It will be called the Yankee novel, and rightly ; for 
nowhere else have we seen the thought, dialect, and customs of a New England 
Village, so well and faithfully represented. . . . More significant to our mind than 
any book that has yet appeared in our country. To us it seems to be a prophecy 
of the future. It contemplates the tendencies of American life and character, 
Nowhere else have we seen, so well written out, the very feelings which our rivers 
and woods and mountains are calculated to awaken. . . . We predict the time when 
Margaret will be one of the AntiquarN^'s text-books. It contains a whole magazine 
of curious relics and habits. ... as a record of great ideas and pure sentiments, we 
place it among the few great books of the age." 

From the North A merican Review. 
•• We know not where any could go to find more exact and pleasing descriptions 
of the scenery of New England, or of the vegetable and animal forms which give it 
life. ... As a representation of manners as they were, and in many respects are 
Still, in New England, this book is of great value." 

From the London Athencenm, 
" This book, though published some time since in America, has only recently 
become known here by a few stray copies that have found their way over. Its 
leading idea is so well worked out, that, with all its faults of detail, it strikes us as 
deservmg a wider circulation. . . . The book bears the impress of a new country, 
and is full of rough, uncivilized, but vigorous life. The leading idea which it seems 
intended to expound is, that the surest way to degrade men is to make themselves 
degraded ; that so long as that belief does not poison the sources of experience, 

* all thinf^s^ — even the sins, follies, mistakes, so rife among men — can be made 
'to work together for good.' Tiiis doctrine, startling as it may sound at first, is 
wrought out with a fine knowledge of human nature." 

From, the A nti-Slavery Standard. 
" A remarkable book, with much good common sense in it, full of deep thought, 

?ervaded throughout with strong religious feeling, a full conception of the essence of 
Ihristianity, a tender compassion for the present condition of man, and an abiding 
hope through love of what his destiny may be. . . . But all who, like Margaret, 

• dream dreams,' and 'see visions,' and look for that time to come when man shall 
have 'worked out his own salvation,' and peace shall reign on earth, and good-will 
to men, will, if they can pardon the faults of the book for its merit, read it with 
aridity and pleasure. " 

From the Boston Daily Advertiser. 
" This is quite a remarkable book, reminding you of Southey's ' Doctor,' per- 
haps, more than of any other book. . . . Margaret is a most angelic being, who 
loves everybody and whom everybody loves, and whose sweet influence is felt 
whei ever she appears. She has visions of ideal beauty, and her waking eyes see 
beauty and joy in every thing." 

From the Christian Register. 
"This is a remarkable book. Its scene is laid in New England, and its period 
•ome half century ago. Its materials are drawn from the most familiar element? 
of every-day life. Its merits are so peculiar, and there is so much that is originaJ 
and rich in its contents, that, sooner or later, it will be appreciated. It is impossi- 
ble to predict with assurance the fate of a book, but we shall be much mistaken 
if Margaret does not in due season work its way to a degree of admiration seldom 
attained by a work of its class." 

Sold everywhere. Mailed^ prepaid, on receipt of price^ 
by the Publishers^ 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



